Other forms: banks
A bank is the building or business where people keep their money. Go to the bank, a bank account, the bank refused.
Bank account, bank holiday, bank statement and central bank are standard. There is a separate word bank meaning the raised side of a river, and another meaning a row of things: a bank of switches, a bank of cloud. As a verb, to bank on something is to rely on it. Note banking; and that a river bank and a money bank both come from the same idea of a raised bench or ridge.
1nounbankA business that keeps and lends money.~98%
“The bank on that corner closed in about 2019.”
2nounraisedThe raised side of a river, or a row of things.~2%
“We sat on the grassy bank of the river and ate our sandwiches.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
bank is a money business, or a ridge.
Italian banca meant a moneychanger's bench, from a Germanic word for a bench — the same root as the river bank, a raised ridge. When a moneychanger failed, his bench was broken: banca rotta, which gives bankrupt.
Middle English
banke
Middle French
banque
English, today
bank
From Middle French banque. Middle English banke, from Middle French banque, from Italian banca (“counter, moneychanger's bench or table”), from lng bank (“bench, counter”), from Proto-West Germanic banki, from Proto-Germanic bankiz (“bench, counter”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰeg- (“to turn, curve, bend, bow”). a doublet of bench and banc and banco. For the bench-bank relation, compare typologically ла́вка, прила́вок.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA