Cash usually refers to money in the form of currency, such as banknotes and coins.
In bookkeeping and finance, "cash" refers to current assets comprised of currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately (as in the case of money market accounts).
The English word cash
is of the French caisse,
itself a borrowing of the Provençal caissa.
That Provençal word is a derivative of the Latin capsa
(box, chest), most likely by way of an unattested Vulgar Latin
form *capsea; Spanish caja
and Portuguese caixa
are their respective languages' reflexes.
From the original sense of a box or a chest, the word came to refer to a sum of money such as was or might be contained in one, and eventually to specie
or, with the elimination of metallic standards, banknotes
. In this sense, it is used in contrast to credit or other financial instruments.
Historical usage in Asia
The word was formerly used also to refer to certain low-value coins used in South
and East Asia
. This sense derives from the Tamil/Telugu kāsu,
a South Indian
monetary unit which can be traced back to Sanskrit karsa
, a weight of gold or silver but akin to Old Persian karsha
-, a weight. a unit of value equivalent to one cash coin. The early European representations of this Tamil/Telugu word, including Portuguese caxa
and English cass,
merged the existing words caixa
which had similar connections with money. In the pre-1818 South Indian monetary system, the cash was the basic coin, with 80 cash equalling a fanam
and 42 fanams equalling a star pagoda
worth roughly 7s.
This assimilated Tamil/Telugu word was then applied to various other coins with which European traders came into contact, including the famous holed cash coins of China, the Chinese cash. These coins were commonly strung on cords for use in larger transactions; 1000 equalled a tael.