tontine
/ˈtɒntaɪn//tɒnˈtiːn/
tontine noun: a form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors.
Noun
tontine (plural tontines)
- A form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors.
- When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads in white-frilled trousers, their father—a well-to-do merchant in Cheapside—caused them to join a small but rich tontine of seven-and-thirty lives.1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, chapter 1, in The Wrong Box
- There were many speculative schemes which gambled on the expectation of an individual's life, as in the tontine system, whereby all the group's contributions went to the last survivor.1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 634
Forms of tontine
| plural | tontines |
|---|
Origin of tontine
From French tontine, named after Lorenzo de Tonti, who introduced the scheme into France in around 1653. Thus, from Tonti + -ine.
Words formed from tontine
Questions about tontine
- What does tontine mean?
- Tontine means a form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors.
- What part of speech is tontine?
- Tontine is a noun.
- How do you pronounce tontine?
- Tontine is pronounced /tɒnˈtiːn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tontine?
- The plural of tontine is tontines.
Words near tontine in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tontine (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tontine.wav.
Cite this entry: “tontine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tontine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.