Other forms: cashed, cashing, cashes
Cash is real paper money and coins rather than a card. Pay cash, cash only, run out of cash.
Cash machine, cash register, cash flow and petty cash are standard. Cash flow is the movement of money into and out of a business and is what kills companies that are profitable on paper. As a verb, to cash a cheque is to exchange it for money. Note cash in on something, meaning to profit from it; and that cash use in Britain has fallen from about six in ten payments to fewer than two in a decade.
1nouncashPaper money and coins rather than a card.
“Do you want to pay in cash or by card?”
2verbexchangeTo exchange a cheque for money.
“She went to the bank to cash her birthday cheque.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cash is money in hand.
Middle French caisse meant a money box, from Latin capsa, a case. Cash was the box before it was the contents, which is why a cash register is named for the drawer.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-<id:seize> — grasp
Latin
capsa — box
Occitan
caissa
Middle French
caisse — money-box
English, today
cash
Built 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”). a doublet of case and chase and chasse. Compare Spanish caja (“box”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA