cash
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Money in the form of bills or coins.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kashIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkæʃ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Money in the form of bills or coins
“There is a desperate shortage of hard cash.”
uncountablefinance
Liquid assets, money that can be traded quickly, as distinct from assets that are invested and cannot be easily exchanged.
United States country music singer and songwriter (1932-2003)
A number of places in the United States
countablecanada
Cash register, or the counter in a business where the cash register is located.
A minor city in Craighead County, Arkansas; a corruption of Cache River.
verb
transitive
To exchange (a check/cheque) for money in the form of notes/bills.
To disband. To do away with, to kill.
Exchange for cash
“I cashed the check as soon as it arrived in the mail.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Money in the form of bills or coins
Used this way, cash is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
“There is a desperate shortage of hard cash.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Moneynoun
“There is a desperate shortage of hard cash.”
Exchangeverb
“I cashed the check as soon as it arrived in the mail.”
More ways to use cash
- “There is a desperate shortage of hard cash.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
An employee of a bank who receives and pays out money.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A method of accounting in which each item is entered as payments are received or made.
A credit card that entitles the holder to receive cash.
A project that generates a continuous flow of money.
A readily salable crop that is grown and gathered for the market (as vegetables or cotton or tobacco).
An unattended machine (outside some banks) that dispenses money when a personal coded card is used.
A highly liquid debt instrument with maturities of less than three months.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to exchange (a check/cheque) for money in the form of notes/bills
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.