Other forms: revenues
Revenue is the money coming in — all of it, before anything is taken out. A café's revenue is everything the till takes in a month; the rent, the beans and the wages come out of that afterwards.
Revenue is the top line of the accounts and profit is the bottom one, which is why a company with enormous revenue can still lose money. British business says turnover for the same figure. Governments have revenue too: tax revenue, and in Britain HM Revenue and Customs, known to everyone as the Revenue. The plural appears when the money arrives in separate streams — advertising revenues, oil revenues. Watch the phrases it lives inside: revenue stream, revenue growth, generate revenue.
1nounrevenueThe money a business takes in from its sales, before costs are subtracted.
“Revenue rose by twelve per cent but profits fell.”
synonyms: turnover, takings
2noungovernmentThe money a government raises, chiefly through taxes.
“Fuel duty is a major source of government revenue.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
revenue is money coming in.
Revenue is what comes back. It arrived from Middle French revenue, the feminine past participle of revenir, to come back, from Latin revenire, built on re- and venire. English had it by 1433, meaning the income from property or possessions.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷem-
Latin
revenire — to return, come back
Middle French
revenue
English, today
revenue
Built from
Recorded in English from 1433, "income from property or possessions", from Middle French revenue, from Old French (“a return”) (modern French revenu), the prop. feminine past participle of revenir (“come back”) (=modern French), from Latin revenire (“to return, come back”), from re- + venire.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA