income

Noun

income (countable and uncountable, plural incomes)

1. Money one earns by working or by capitalising on the work of others.
   • The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
   • In 1970 the richest 1 percent made 9 percent of the nation’s income; now that top slice makes closer to 25 percent.2010 December 4, Evan Thomas, “Why It’s Time to Worry”, in Newsweek, retrieved 16 Jun 2013
2. Money coming in to a fund, account, or policy.
3. (obsolete) A coming in; arrival; entrance; introduction.
   • more abundant incomes of light and strength from God1667, George Rust, A Funeral Sermon, preached at the obsequies of […] Jeremy Lord Bishop of Down
   • Pain payes the income of ech precious thing,1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC
4. (Scotland, archaic, dialectal) A newcomer or arrival; an incomer.
5. (obsolete) An entrance-fee.
6. (archaic) A coming in as by influx or inspiration, hence, an inspired quality or characteristic, as courage or zeal; an inflowing principle.
   • I would then make in indeed and steep / My income in their bloods.[1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; republished as The Iliads of Homer...
7. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) A disease or ailment without known or apparent cause, as distinguished from one induced by accident or contagion; an oncome.
8. That which is taken into the body as food; the ingesta; sometimes restricted to the nutritive, or digestible, portion of the food.