1594: firm Apr 26, 2019

Word like 'note, 'bill', and as discussed yesterday, 'bank', all existed before the modern understanding of banking was invented; indeed this is true often because of how new the practice is relatively, but also how gradually it started. Often, though not always, related to financing is the noun 'firm', which unexpectedly is related to adjective, but less obviously it is also related to 'farm'. The word comes from Latin meaning 'fixed', but this has less to do with fixed location and more to do with fixed contracts for tax and rent. Eventually, the word came to mean a fixed contract in a more general sense for something with fixed transaction rates. Naturally, this moved from landownership exclusively as society evolved with the word.