the.com/finance
The art of moving other people's money and calling it skill.
means The management of money — investing, borrowing, lending, and budgeting it — especially as a system or profession.
from From Old French 'finance' meaning payment or ending of a debt, rooted in the verb 'finer,' to settle or finish. That in turn traces to Latin 'finis,' meaning end or boundary — the same root that gives us 'final' and 'finish.' So the word's deep sense is simply 'settling up.' It drifted through French bureaucratic usage toward meanings of ransom, taxation, and revenue before arriving in English in the 1400s–1500s as a word for monetary resources and dealings in general.
- word drift
- Once meant ransom payment, not investing
- core idea
- All of finance is just time plus risk
- oldest instrument
- Debt predates coined money by centuries
- irony
- Risk management invented, then detonated, by mathematicians