Skip to content
Allin

finance

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//fɪˈnæns//
  • //ˈfaɪnæns//

The management of money and other assets.

noun

  1. 1

    The management of money and other assets.

    And statesmen as well ought to know these things; for a state is often as much in want of money and of such devices for obtaining it as a household, or even more so; hence some public men devote themselves entirely to finance.

    Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. Those that want to borrow are matched with those that want to lend.

  2. 2

    The science of management of money and other assets.

  3. 3

    Monetary resources, especially those of a public entity or a company.

    Who's really in charge of a democracy's finances?

  4. 4

    The provision of a loan, payment instalment terms, or similar arrangement, to enable a customer to purchase an item without paying the full amount straight away.

    Finance on all our new cars is provided by ABC Loans Ltd.

Etymology

From Middle English finaunce, from Anglo-Norman, Middle French finance, from finer (“to pay ransom”) (whence also English fine (“to pay a penalty”)), from fin (“end”), from Latin fīnis. Original English sense that appeared c. 1400 was “ending”. The sense of “ending or satisfying a debt” originated from French influence: in the sense of “ransom” appeared in the mid 15th century, in the sense of “taxation” appeared in the late 15th century. In the sense of “manage money” first recorded c. 1770.

verb

  1. 1

    To conduct, or procure money for, financial operations; manage finances.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo pay ransom.

  3. 3

    To manage financially; be financier for; provide or obtain funding for a transaction or undertaking.

    His parents financed his college education.

    He financed his home purchase through a local credit union.

    Therefore, when assets are examined together with other problems, such as one-sided contracts or delays in payment, the argument for financing construction projects is substantially weakened.

    This is not a historical novel yet it is in a sense historical and contained within this book is a true story of how America was financed.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo extort ransom from.

Forms

plural
finances
past tense
financed
past participle
financed
present participle
financing
third person singular
finances
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).