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premium

UK/ˈpɹiː.miː.əm/US/ˈpɹiː.miː.əm/
nounC13 meaningsCommon in everyday speech and writing · #6,388 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: premiums

A premium is what you pay an insurance company, month after month, to keep your cover alive. The car premium jumps after a claim; the house premium lands in January whether you have claimed or not.

Outside insurance, a premium is extra money paid above the normal price: tickets changing hands at a premium, a premium of ten per cent for next-day delivery. As an adjective it marks the dearer version of a thing - premium fuel, premium seats, a premium account. At a premium means scarce and therefore valuable, which is why space is at a premium in a small kitchen. To put a premium on something is to treat it as especially important. Keep the direction straight: the premium is money going out to the insurer, and what comes back after a fire is a payout on a claim.

Definitions of premium

  1. 1nounpremiumA regular payment made to keep an insurance policy in force.C1~25%

    “Their premium went up by forty pounds after the second claim.”

  2. 2nounamountAn amount paid on top of a normal price or value.C1~25%

    “Buyers pay a premium for the flats with a river view.”

  3. 3adjectivehigherOf higher quality and higher price.C1~50%

    “The premium tickets come with a seat at the front and a free programme.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

premium is a payment.

Phrases it lives in

  • at a premium — scarce, and valuable because of it
  • put a premium on — treat as especially important

Where it comes from

Premium is Latin praemium taken whole into English, and in Latin it meant a prize - the reward carried off after a battle or a race. English kept the shape of the word and drained the glory out of it, so what once meant spoils now means the direct debit that keeps your car on the road.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₁em-

  2. Latin

    praemium — prize

  3. English, today

    premium

From Latin praemium (“prize”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Shopping & Money, A Man Called Ove, Business & Money

First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

premium in the wild

  • The model is used in software, online services, media paywalls, and video games, where revenue may come from subscriptions, advertising, or purchases of premium content.

    Freemium

  • Knox appealed, as he contended that this instruction was equivalent to telling the jury to add a premium for the discount of paper currency relative to specie.

    Knox v. Lee

  • Treasury and the rest primarily from the Part A Trust Fund (which is funded by payroll taxes) and premiums paid by beneficiaries.

    Medicare (United States)

  • In 1997, the bank entered the capital market with an initial public offering of 1,360,000 shares at a premium of Rs. 440 per share.

    State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur

  • Insurance in the United States refers to the market for risk in the United States, the world's largest insurance market by premium volume.

    Insurance in the United States

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.