currency
Pluralcurrencies
- 1Money or other items used to make buying and selling possible.
Each nation issues its own currency to support domestic trade.
Some communities created local currencies to keep money circulating nearby.
Note
Every sense of the word goes back to running: Medieval Latin currentia, from Latin currēns, from currō, 'run.' Money is what runs from hand to hand. Used uncountably, the word means money in general. Counted, it names a particular system, so investors weigh currencies against one another and track currency values. Wampum shows that the word needs no coins or notes, only something people accept in trade.
- 2Money in the form of printed banknotes rather than coins.
The bank shipped crates of fresh currency to branches across the region.
Old currency was withdrawn from circulation and replaced with newly printed notes.
Similarbanknotes, notes, bills
Note
Narrowed to the printed note, the word becomes something you can count piece by piece. In William Saroyan's The Human Comedy (1943), a character empties his pockets and finds small coins and 'one piece of currency,' a single bill set against the loose change. That contrast is the whole use: coins are change, and paper is currency. Elsewhere, context decides whether paper or money in general is meant.
- 3The condition of being generally accepted, recognized, or in use.
His ideas about reform gained wide currency during the 1990s.
The old slang lost currency once the trend faded.
Similaracceptance, popularity, circulation, prevalence
Note
Here the word wears its build openly: current plus -cy, the quality of being current, and the abstract idea behind the money sense. Ideas, phrases and beliefs have currency when they circulate widely. The word can also be weighed against a single person. In Kenneth Hale Wehmann's "Conscientious Resistance" (1983), fear of punishment "has no currency with me": it carries no weight with him.
Less common meanings
- 4The value at which something is generally estimated; the rate at which anything is commonly valued.
Note
Worth as the world reckons it, rather than worth in itself, is the distinction Francis Bacon draws when he faults judging kingdoms 'according to their bulk and currency, and not after intrinsic value.' Washington Irving still uses it in 1819. The sense is now obsolete, and modern English says standing or reputation. In older texts, read it as how highly something is rated, not whether it is in use.
- 5Fluency in speaking; readiness and ease of utterance.
Note
Speech that runs freely is the image here, the same running that lies behind the money sense. The meaning is obsolete, so in modern writing 'currency of speech' would be misread as up-to-date language; fluency or ease of delivery is the safe choice. In older prose, a speaker's currency is how readily the words come, not how current they are.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Medieval Latin currentia, from Latin currēns, from currō; by surface analysis, it is 'current' plus the suffix '-cy'.