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revenue

/ˈrɛvənjuː/

income returning from business or property

From Latin re- (back) + Latin venire (to come).

noun
verb/rɪˈvɛnjuː/
re-
Latin
AI-inferred
re-
prefix meaning 'back' or 'again'
Old French
AI-inferred
re- / re-
kept the sense of return or backward motion
venire
Latin
Verified
venire
to come

from Latin revenire "return, come back,"

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Old French
Verified
venir
to come

from Latin revenire "return, come back,"

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Middle French
Verified
revenu(e)
past participle used as a noun: 'a return'

from Old French revenue "a return," noun use of fem. past participle of revenir "come back" (10c.)

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Combined
revenue
a noun built from 'come back' — what comes back to you
Middle English
Verified
revenue
attested by the early 15th century as income from property or possessions

from Old French revenue "a return," noun use of fem. past participle of revenir "come back" (10c.)

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Modern English
Verified
revenue
expanded to mean government income and business sales

from Old French revenue "a return," noun use of fem. past participle of revenir "come back" (10c.)

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Modern English
revenue

Money has a funny habit of coming back dressed as a noun. In Old French, revenue was literally a 'return' — the past participle of revenir, 'to come back' — and English borrowed it in the 1400s to mean income that keeps reappearing from land, rents, or investments. That makes it a cousin of return, revert, and even revenue-sharing, where the whole idea is that cash has made a round trip and landed in a ledger instead of a suitcase. By the 1680s, the word had grown official enough to describe a government's tax take, which is a deliciously bureaucratic way of saying: what the state gets when money comes home. Revenue is basically return with a bank account and a badge.

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