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Gresham's law

Gresham's law proper noun: a principle stating that when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

Proper noun

Gresham's law

  1. A principle stating that when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

Origin of Gresham's law

Named after English merchant and financier Thomas Gresham (1519–1579) by Scottish economist and lawyer Henry Dunning Macleod in 1858.

Questions about Gresham's law

What does Gresham's law mean?
Gresham's law means a principle stating that when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.
What part of speech is Gresham's law?
Gresham's law is a proper noun.

Words near Gresham's law in the dictionary

  1. greps
  2. gres
  3. Gresford
  4. Gresh
  5. Gresham
  6. Gresham's law
  7. Greshams
  8. Greshan
  9. Greshes
  10. Gresik
  11. Gresko

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Gresham's law (page history and authors). 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.

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