compound interest

Noun

compound interest (usually uncountable, plural compound interests)

1. (usually) Interest, as on a loan or a bank account, that is calculated on the total on the principal plus accumulated unpaid interest.
   • […] tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC
   • Arithmetic books published during the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries have little to say about interest although the practice of calculating compound interest was old at that time.2014 [1967], C. Attwood, Compound Interest Functions: Practical Tables Series, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 210