Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An advance or a loan of funds, especially for services rendered to a government.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To advance on loan.
  • noun A form of loan; money advanced. See the extract.
  • noun A former and still occasional spelling of impressed, preterit and past participle of impress.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To advance on loan.
  • noun A kind of earnest money; loan; -- specifically, money advanced for some public service, as in enlistment.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From obsolete Italian impresto, loan, from past participle of imprestare, to lend : in-, toward (from Latin; see in–) + prestare, to lend (from Latin praestāre, to give, from praestō, at hand; see ghes- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Prefix form of prest, perhaps after Italian imprestare, or perhaps from a misunderstand of the phrase in prest.

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