cash

UK/ˈkæʃ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈkaʃ/

cash noun: money in the form of notes or bills and coins, as opposed to checks, credit or electronic transactions.

Image: Southern Railway System, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

cash (usually uncountable, plural cashes)

(usually) Money in the form of notes or bills and coins, as opposed to checks, credit or electronic transactions.
- How are you off for cash? After you bounced those checks last time, they want to be paid in cash.
- When a man bargains for the price of maintaining such or such principles, or of endeavouring to make out such or such a case, without believing in the soundness of the principles or the truth of the case; such a man, whether he touch the cash (or paper-money) before or after the performance of his...1810 July 13, William Cobbett, “To the Reader”, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, volume XVIII, number 1, London: Printed by T[homas] C[urson] Hansard, Peterborough Court, Fleet Street; and...
Synonyms:

cash money, cold hard cash
(usually) Liquid assets, money that can be traded quickly, as distinct from assets that are invested and cannot be easily exchanged.
- Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries […].2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68
(informal, usually) Money.
- Paying yourself first also implies that you have some understanding of your cash flow, which means that, yes, you must set a budget.2017, Erin Lowry, Broke Millennial, page 146
(Canada, countable, usually) Cash register, or the counter in a business where the cash register is located.
- Let me just bring these to the cash for you.
- Visit Apple’s jam-packed stores and you won’t see lines at the cash — because every sales clerk is also your cashier, using cellphone card-readers to zip you through.2017 December 30, Josh Freed, “Just you wait — technology might be the end of the line”, in Montreal Gazette, page A4, column 2
(countable, usually) An instance of winning a cash prize.
- In the WSOP, I have played around 150 tournaments with one final table, 11 cashes, and a -70 percent ROI.2012, Jonathan Little, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 2
(archaic, countable, usually) A place where money is kept, or where it is deposited and paid out; a money box.
- This bank[…] is properly a general cash, where every man lodges his money,1787 [1764], Adam Anderson, quoting William Temple, An Historical And Chronological Deduction Of The Origin Of Commerce, From the Earliest Accounts, volume 1, page 236
- She was said to have amassed a great sum of money for ill use ; 20,000l. are known to be in her cash ;1852, Theresa Lewis, quoting a letter from John More to Ralph Winwood, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, volume 2, page 321

Verb (1)

cash (third-person singular simple present cashes, present participle cashing, simple past and past participle cashed)

(transitive) To exchange (a check/cheque) for money in the form of notes/bills.
- My single "Lick and Move" had made it to number four on the Top Ten charts, and I had gotten a nice check from Ruthless Rap. I cashed that shit and took Muddah shopping in Midtown and told her to get any damn thing she wanted.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 247
(slang) To obtain a payout from a tournament.

Adjective

cash (comparative more cash, superlative most cash)

(slang) Great; excellent; cool.

Noun (2)

cash (plural cashes or cash)

(historical) The low-denomination coin of southern India until 1818.
(historical) Any of several similar coins in Southeast and East Asia, particularly the imperial Chinese copper coin.
- Shentzŭ is the Chinese name for what we would call a mule litter. As this conveyance can go over almost any kind of road, I decided on it, and engaged two mules for the litter, and a donkey for the baggage: the three animals with the shentzŭ and a man cost 1300 cash per day when we travelled, and...1896, Alexander Armstrong, In a Mule Litter to the Tomb of Confucius, pages 2-3

Verb (2)

cash (third-person singular simple present cashes, present participle cashing, simple past and past participle cashed)

To disband. To do away with, to kill.
- He cashed the old souldiers, and supplied their roumes with yong beginners.1564, Arthur Golding, Abridgment of the histories of Trogus Pompeius

Proper noun capitalized: Cash

Cash (countable and uncountable, plural Cashes)

A surname originating as an occupation.
A male given name transferred from the surname.
- This ill-chosen subplot also means that Kingsolver must make Cash Stillwater (named for his mother's favorite singer, Johnny Cash) more than just a returning widower.2014, Linda Wagner-Martin, Barbara Kingsolver's World: Nature, Art, and the Twenty-First Century, →ISBN
A minor city in Craighead County, Arkansas; a corruption of Cache River.
An unincorporated community in Gordon County, Georgia, named after a sign "Cash or nothing".
An unincorporated community in Hart County, Kentucky, named after a postmaster.
A locale in Watertown Township, Sanilac County, Michigan, named after Edward Cash.
A census-designated place in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, named after Col. E. B. Cash.
An unincorporated community in Hunt County, Texas, named Cash after the name 'Money' was rejected by the Post Office.

Noun (3) capitalized: CASH

CASH

(abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of calcium aluminium silicate hydrate.
(US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health.

cash meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

cash in Hindi

money in the form of notes/bills and coins: रोकड़ rokaṛ, कैश kaiś, भंजाना bhañjānā, नक़द naqad

cash in Tamil

low-denomination coins of India or China: காசு kācu

cash in Marathi

money in the form of notes/bills and coins: रोख rokh

cash in Urdu

money in the form of notes/bills and coins: نَقْد naqd, روکَڑ rokaṛ, کَیش kaiś

More languagesFewer languages

cash in Bengali: নগদ nogod, ফুলুস phulus
cash in Telugu: చేతివెల cētivela, రొక్కము rokkamu, కాసులు kāsulu, క్యాష్ kyāṣ
cash in Odia: ନଗଦ nagada
cash in Nepali: नगद, नगदी
cash in Pashto: نقد naqd, نغد naǧd
cash in Tagalog: kaliwaan, salaping hawak
cash in Arabic: نَقْد naqd, نُقُود nuqūd
cash in Malay: tunai
cash in Indonesian: tunai, kontan, kes
cash in Thai: เงินสด ngən-sòt
cash in Vietnamese: tiền mặt, đồng, đồng tiền
cash in Myanmar: ငွေသား ngwesa:, ကြေးငွေ kre:ngwe

Examples of cash in a sentence

Please pay me in cash — preferably in tens and twenties.
During the summer, Peter earned some extra cash by leafleting for a local pizza delivery restaurant.
The casino is just raking in the cash; it’s like a licence to print money.

All 40 example sentences with cash

Synonyms of cash

Forms of cash

Noun
plural	cashes
plural	cash
Verb
third-person singular present	cashes
present participle	cashing
past participle	cashed
past	cashed
Adjective
comparative	more cash
superlative	most cash
Proper noun
plural	Cashes

Past tense of cash: cashed

Plural of cash: cashes

Origin of cash

From late Middle French caisse (“money-box”), itself borrowed from Occitan caissa, from Latin capsa (“box”), ultimately from capiō (“take, seize”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“grasp”). Doublet of case, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja (“box”).

Variant of earlier cass under influence from cash above, from Tamil காசு (kācu), ultimately from Sanskrit karsha ("weight of 1/400 tulā, तुला"). Extended to other similar forms of low-denomination coins in Southeast and East Asia following the example of cognate Portuguese cas, casse, caxa, caixa.

See cashier.

Phrases with cash

62 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with cash

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cash

What does cash mean?: Cash means money in the form of notes or bills and coins, as opposed to checks, credit or electronic transactions.
What is cash in Hindi?: Cash in Hindi is रोकड़ (rokaṛ), कैश (kaiś), भंजाना (bhañjānā). See Cash meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is cash?: Cash can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cash?: Cash is pronounced /ˈkæʃ/ (UK).
What is the plural of cash?: The plural of cash is cashes.

Words near cash in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: cash (page history and authors); Cash (page history and authors); CASH (page history and authors); cash (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cash.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.