Other forms: dividends
A dividend is the share of profit a company pays out to its shareholders. Pay a dividend, a dividend of twelve pence a share, cut the dividend.
Cutting a dividend is a serious signal in business reporting, because companies do it only when they must. There is a common figurative use: something pays dividends when the benefit arrives later — a little care now pays dividends. And the peace dividend is the money a country expects to save when a war or an arms race ends. In arithmetic, the dividend is the number being divided, which is the oldest and plainest sense.
1noundividendA share of profit paid to shareholders.
“The dividend was held at last year's level.”
2nounbenefitA benefit that arrives later.
“Learning it properly the first time pays dividends.”
3nounarithmeticIn arithmetic, the number being divided.
“Divide the dividend by the divisor.”
dividend is a share paid out.
Latin dividendum means a thing to be divided, from dividere, to divide — the same verb behind division, individual, which is what cannot be divided, and device. A dividend is simply the part that gets shared out.
Latin
dīvidendum — thing to be divided
Middle French
dividende
English, today
dividend
Built from
From Middle French dividende, from Latin dīvidendum (“thing to be divided”), future passive participle of dīvidō (“to divide”), by surface analysis, divide + -end.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA