Definitions

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

  • noun The act of investing.
  • noun An amount invested.
  • noun Property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit.
  • noun A commitment, as of time or support.
  • noun A military siege.
  • noun Investiture.
  • noun A garment; a vestment.
  • noun An outer covering or layer.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That with which a person or thing is invested or covered; clothing; vestment; covering.
  • noun The act of investing, or the state of being invested, as with a right, office, or attribute; endowment; investiture.
  • noun A surrounding or hemming in; blockade of the avenues of ingress and egress, as for the besieging of a town or fortress; inclosure by armed force or other obstruction.
  • noun An investing of money or capital; expenditure for profit or future benefit; a placing or conversion of capital in a way intended to secure income or profit from its employment: as, an investment in active business, or in stocks, land, or the like; to make safe investment of one's principal.
  • noun That which is invested; money or capital laid out for the purpose of producing profit or benefit.
  • noun That in which money is laid out or invested: as, land is the safest investment.

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

  • noun The act of investing, or the state of being invested.
  • noun That with which anyone is invested; a vestment.
  • noun (Mil.) The act of surrounding, blocking up, or besieging by an armed force, or the state of being so surrounded.
  • noun The laying out of money in the purchase of some species of property; also, the amount of money invested, or that in which money is invested.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of investing, or state of being invested.
  • noun finance A placement of capital in expectation of deriving income or profit from its use.
  • noun That with which anyone is invested; a vestment.
  • noun military The act of surrounding, blocking up, or besieging by an armed force, or the state of being so surrounded.
  • noun A mixture of silica sand and plaster which, by surrounding a wax pattern, creates a negative mold of the form used for casting, among other metals, bronze.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun outer layer or covering of an organ or part or organism
  • noun the commitment of something other than money (time, energy, or effort) to a project with the expectation of some worthwhile result
  • noun money that is invested with an expectation of profit
  • noun the ceremonial act of clothing someone in the insignia of an office; the formal promotion of a person to an office or rank
  • noun the act of investing; laying out money or capital in an enterprise with the expectation of profit
  • noun the act of putting on robes or vestments

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

invest +‎ -ment

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Examples

  • It's easy to wonder why he remained silent while markets were soaring and investment banks were reaping trillions in profits on a “structured investment” swindle which has left the global financial system teetering on the brink of catastrophe.

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: The Great Credit Unwind of '08 2008

  • It\'s easy to wonder why he remained silent while markets were soaring and investment banks were reaping trillions in profits on a “structured investment” swindle which has left the global financial system teetering on the brink of catastrophe. '

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: The Great Credit Unwind of '08 2008

  • In the popular mind, the term "investment banker" includes just about everyone in that amorphous and secretive beehive, Wall Street, including traders, lawyers, money managers and adjective-less bankers meaning lenders.

    Robert Teitelman: Svengalis, Bankers and the Role of Intermediaries Robert Teitelman 2011

  • The section was removed, the SEC said in a filing on April 18, 2011, because the term investment banking could have been read as applying to "syndicate" staffers, who routinely make decisions on how to allocate IPOs to firms' clients.

    Rule to Prevent Abuse of IPOs Is Delayed Randall Smith 2011

  • There is a very narrow range of properties that are worthy of the term investment grade.

    Creating Wealth Robert G. Allen 2006

  • There is a very narrow range of properties that are worthy of the term investment grade.

    Creating Wealth Robert G. Allen 2006

  • The term 'investment partnership' means any partnership if, at the end of any calendar quarter ending after December 31, 2012

    Forbes.com: News Peter J Reilly 2011

  • Because energy will be priced at gold level and taken into calculation when the demand of a certain investment is raised.

    How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com 2007

  • At least $10 million of the state's $55 million coin investment is believed to be missing.

    06/01/2005 2005

  • After 11 years editing the magazine I am moving to a new position at Forbes, as a writer, with the title investment strategies editor.

    paidContent 2010

Comments

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  • How rich people turn money into more money.

    December 3, 2007

  • The correct usage is a term to describe how individuals in a society choose to allocate scarce resources towards projects which have a reasonable expectation of increasing social goods. The distorted application of investment is deployed by ostensibly disinterested third parties who claim that confiscating an individual's resources for spreading to other individuals on a non-rational basis is an investment as opposed to that action's true nature, which is coercive redistribution.

    May 27, 2010