Other forms: investments
An investment is money you put somewhere in the hope it will be worth more later. Shares, a flat you rent out, a pension paid into every month for forty years.
The word names the act as well as the money — investment in the railways has stalled — and it stretches past cash to anything you put in and expect a return on: an investment of time, of energy, of trust. Call a coat a good investment and you mean it will last long enough to make the price look small. The preposition is IN, never on: investment in education, investment in staff. And the word promises nothing; an investment can lose the lot, which is why the small print says the value can go down as well as up.
1nouninvestmentMoney put into something in the hope of making more.
“Her investment in the company doubled in three years.”
synonyms: stake, outlay
2nounactThe act of putting money into something to develop it.
“The region needs serious investment in public transport.”
3nounbuySomething you buy or do because it pays off later.
“A good mattress is an investment, not an extravagance.”
4nountimeTime, effort or feeling put into something.
“The project represents years of investment by the whole team.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
investment is a use of money.
Latin
investio
Middle French
investir
English
invest
English, today
investment
Built from
From invest + -ment. invest Borrowed from Middle French investir, from Latin investio. Borrowed from Middle French investir or Medieval Latin investire, from Latin investio (“to clothe, cover”), from in- (“in, on”) + vestio (“to clothe, dress”), from vestis (“clothing”); see vest. The sense “to spend money etc.” probably via Italian investire, of the same root.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA