1473: interest Dec 24, 2018

Bankers certainly have an interest in interest, but otherwise the two words don’t seem to overlap much, grammatically or in meaning. However, as you might have guessed from this, the two are indeed related, only splitting fairly recently. The word comes from Latin ‘interesse’ but in Old French it gained the meaning of ‘possession or right to something’. This then went on to equate to both financial interest, and then in the 18th century became a associated with wanting to know something. However, in the senses relating to finance and property with this word, it was influenced in the Middle Ages by other words ‘interest’ and ‘interesse’ that had meanings in French and Latin respectively of ‘damage’ and ‘debt defaulting’. Catch up on the newest video here: https://youtu.be/97RX-SwGq5U