Investment

How to spell investment

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce investment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does investment mean?

1. nounMoney committed to an asset or venture in the expectation of earning a return, or the act of committing it.

Investment in a sentence

• The property turned out to be a sound long-term investment.

• Financial advisers urged caution before any large investment.

Where does investment come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb vestire, meaning 'to clothe' or 'to dress', which is built on vestis, the Latin word for a garment. The financial sense grew from a striking metaphor: to 'invest' money was to clothe it in a new form, much as putting on robes of office surrounds a person with new powers. English picked up 'invest' in the late 1500s, partly through Italian commercial usage where investire described the committing of funds to trade. The abstract noun 'investment' followed, at first describing the act of installing someone in office and only later settling into its dominant modern meaning of putting money to work for a return. The same vestire root still clothes the everyday words 'vest', 'vestment', and 'divest', and remembering that hidden 'vest' helps fix the spelling in the middle of the word.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• vest (from Latin vestire: to clothe)
• -ment (noun suffix denoting an action or result)