income

From Middle English income, perhaps continuing (in altered form) Old English incyme (“an in-coming, entrance”), equivalent to in- +‎ come. Cognate with Dutch inkomen (“income, earnings, gainings”), German Einkommen (“income, earnings, competence”), Icelandic innkváma (“income”), Danish indkomst (“income”), Swedish inkomst (“income”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪnˌkʌm/

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income (countable and uncountable, plural incomes)

1. Money one earns by working or by capitalising on the work of others.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 23, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground.

   • 2010 Dec. 4, Evan Thomas, "Why It’s Time to Worry", Newsweek (retrieved 16 June 2013):

     In 1970 the richest 1 percent made 9 percent of the nation’s income; now that top slice makes closer to 25 percent.

   • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19:

     It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

2. (business, commerce) Money coming in to a fund, account, or policy.
3. (obsolete) A coming in; arrival; entrance; introduction.
   • Bishop Rust

     more abundant incomes of light and strength from God

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

4. (archaic or dialectal, Scotland) A newcomer or arrival; an incomer.
5. (obsolete) An entrance-fee.
6. (archaic) A coming in as by influx or inspiration, hence, an inspired quality or characteristic, as courage or zeal; an inflowing principle.
   • Chapman

     I would then make in and steep / My income in their blood.

7. (Britain dialectal, Scotland) A disease or ailment without known or apparent cause, as distinguished from one induced by accident or contagion; an oncome.
8. That which is taken into the body as food; the ingesta; sometimes restricted to the nutritive, or digestible, portion of the food.

• (money coming in): outgo

• come in