Other forms: rentals
A rental is something rented, or the money paid for it. A hire car, a holiday flat, or the sum on the invoice.
American English uses the noun much more freely, so a rental means a hired car or a rented house. British English says hire car and rented flat, and keeps rental mostly for the payment or as an adjective, as in rental income and the rental market. The verb behind it is rent, which confusingly means both to pay for use and to let out for payment.
Latin
rendo
la-eme
rendita
Old French
rente
Middle English
rent
English
rent
English, today
rental
From rent + -al. rent comes from Middle English rent, rente, from Old French rente, from la-eme rendita, from Latin rendo, from Latin reddo.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA