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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

cash.

Money in the form of notes or bills and coins, as opposed to checks, credit or electronic transactions.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkæʃ/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰæʃ]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkaʃ/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈkɛʃ/New-Zealand
  1. Money in the form of notes or bills and coins, as opposed to checks, credit or electronic transactions.

    uncountable · usually
    How are you off for cash? After you bounced those checks last time, they want to be paid in cash.
  2. Liquid assets, money that can be traded quickly, as distinct from assets that are invested and cannot be easily exchanged.

    uncountable · usually
  3. Money.

    informal · uncountable · usually
  4. Cash register, or the counter in a business where the cash register is located.

    Canada · countable · usually
    Let me just bring these to the cash for you.
  5. An instance of winning a cash prize.

    countable · usually
  6. A place where money is kept, or where it is deposited and paid out; a money box.

    archaic · countable · usually
Where this word comes from

From late Middle French caisse (“money-box”), itself borrowed from Occitan caissa, from Latin capsa (“box”), ultimately from capiō (“take, seize”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“grasp”). Doublet of case, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja (“box”).

verb/ˈkæʃ/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰæʃ]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkaʃ/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈkɛʃ/New-Zealand
  1. To exchange (a check/cheque) for money in the form of notes/bills.

    transitive
  2. To obtain a payout from a tournament.

    slang
Where this word comes from

From late Middle French caisse (“money-box”), itself borrowed from Occitan caissa, from Latin capsa (“box”), ultimately from capiō (“take, seize”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“grasp”). Doublet of case, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja (“box”).

adj/ˈkæʃ/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰæʃ]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkaʃ/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈkɛʃ/New-Zealand
  1. Great; excellent; cool.

    slang
Where this word comes from

From late Middle French caisse (“money-box”), itself borrowed from Occitan caissa, from Latin capsa (“box”), ultimately from capiō (“take, seize”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“grasp”). Doublet of case, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja (“box”).

noun/ˈkæʃ/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰæʃ]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkaʃ/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈkɛʃ/New-Zealand
  1. The low-denomination coin of southern India until 1818.

    historical
  2. Any of several similar coins in Southeast and East Asia, particularly the imperial Chinese copper coin.

    historical
Where this word comes from

Variant of earlier cass under influence from cash above, from Tamil காசு (kācu), ultimately from Sanskrit karsha ("weight of 1/400 tulā, तुला"). Extended to other similar forms of low-denomination coins in Southeast and East Asia following the example of cognate Portuguese cas, casse, caxa, caixa.

verb/ˈkæʃ/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰæʃ]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkaʃ/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈkɛʃ/New-Zealand
  1. To disband. To do away with, to kill.

Where this word comes from

See cashier.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.