Monies

How to spell monies

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce monies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does monies mean?

1. nounSeparate sums of money, especially funds gathered or owed from various sources, used in formal or financial contexts.

Monies in a sentence

• The auditor traced all monies paid into the trust account.

• Unspent monies from the grant must be returned to the council.

Where does monies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a plural of 'money', a word that traces back to the Latin moneta, which meant 'mint' or 'coinage' and also served as a title of the goddess Juno, in whose temple in Rome coins were struck. The Latin moneta is thought to derive from monere, 'to warn' or 'to advise', a fitting ancestor for a word about cash. English took 'money' through the Old French moneie during the 1200s, when it referred to coined currency in general. Although 'money' is normally treated as an uncountable noun, accountants and lawyers long ago needed a plural to speak of separate sums or funds from different sources, and so 'monies' (and the equally correct 'moneys') arose. The spelling 'monies' follows the usual English habit of turning a final -y into -ies in the plural, which is exactly why it looks more natural than its rival form and why the trap is remembering that the formal plural exists at all.

How the word is built

• mon- (from Latin moneta: mint, coin)
• -ie- (variant of -y)
• -s (plural)