ready money

ready money (usually uncountable, plural ready moneys or ready monies)

1. Money held ready for payment, or actually paid, at the time of a transaction.
   • 1609, Thomas Dekker, "Lanthorne and candle-light", in The Guls Hornbook and The Belman of London, The Temple Classics, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1905, p. 206,

     […] a yong Fresh-water soldier that never before followed these strange warres, and yet hath a Charge newly given him (by the old fellow Soldado Vecchio his father, when Death had shotte him into the Grave) of some ten or twelve thousand in ready money, besides so many hundreds a yeare […]

   • 1886, Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1987, Chapter XIV, p. 88,

     It might have been supposed that, given a girl rapidly becoming good-looking, comfortably circumstanced, and for the first time in her life commanding ready money, she would go and make a fool of herself by dress.

   • 1895, Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I, Scene I,

     Lane: [Gravely.] There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.

     Algernon: No cucumbers!

     Lane: No, sir. Not even for ready money.

   • 1920, R.B. Cunninghame Graham A Brazilian mystic: being the life and miracles of Antonio Conselheiro, London: William Heinemann, Chapter VI, p. 103,

     It made one sorry to see the extraordinary quantity of cattle, horses, goats, and other things, as houses and estates all sold for less than nothing, in their anxiety to set out on the road and have some ready money in their hands to help the 'holy Councillor' in his mad enterprise.

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter VI, p. 84,

     Any of the fettlers were better off in respect to ready-money than he was.

• cash
• readies