Monetary

How to spell monetary

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce monetary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does monetary mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to money, currency, or the financial system of a country.

Monetary in a sentence

• The central bank adjusted monetary policy to control inflation.

• The charity offers monetary assistance to families facing eviction.

Where does monetary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin monetarius, meaning 'relating to money or the mint', which was built on moneta, the Latin word for both money and the place where coins were struck. That noun has a memorable origin: moneta was a title of the goddess Juno, in whose temple in Rome the earliest Roman coins were minted, so her name came to stand for the mint itself and then for the coins produced there. English adopted monetary in the early 1800s, mainly through scholarly and economic writing, when discussion of currency and finance was expanding. The same moneta root sits behind the everyday word 'money', which travelled a more worn path through Old French, while 'mint' descends from a Germanic borrowing of the very same Latin term. Knowing the root is moneta, not 'money', helps explain why the spelling keeps a single 't' and an 'e' rather than the familiar 'money' shape.

How the word is built

• monet- (from Latin moneta: money, mint)
• -ary (adjective suffix: relating to)