CASH. Originally meaning a box, the word cash, derived from the 0. Fr. casse, a box or chest, is now commonly applied to ready money or coin. In commercial and banking usage, "cash" is sometimes confined to specie; it is also, in opposition to bills, drafts or securities, applied to bank-notes. Hence "to cash" means to convert cheques and other negotiable instruments into coin. In bookkeeping, in such expressions as "petty cash," "cash-book," and the like, it has the same significance, and so also in "cash-payment" or ready-money payment as opposed to "credit," however the payment may be made, by coin, notes or cheque.
Cash is also the name given by English residents in the East to native coins of small value, and particularly to the copper coinage of China, the native name for which is tsien. This, the only coin minted by the government, should bear a fixed ratio of I000 cash to one tael of silver, but in practice there is no such fixed value. It is the universal medium of exchange throughout China for all retail transactions. The tsien is a round disc of copper alloy, with a square hole punched through the centre for stringing. A "string of cash" amounts to Soo or i000 cash, strung in divisions of 5o or 1 oo. The English term is apparently from the Sinhalese Kasi and Tamil Kasu, a small coin.