bank

plural banks · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. countableAn institution where one can place and borrow money and take care of financial affairs.

   1 more example

   Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms.[…]Banks and credit-card firms are kept out of the picture. Talk to enough people in the field and someone is bound to mention the “democratisation of finance”.

   2013 June 1, “End of the peer show”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 71

2. countableA branch office of such an institution.

   Synonyms: Lombard house

3. countableAn underwriter or controller of a card game.

   Synonyms: banker, banque

4. countableA fund from deposits or contributions, to be used in transacting business; a joint stock or capital.

   Let it be no bank or common stock, but every man be master of his own money.

   1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Usury”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC

5. countablegamblingThe sum of money etc. which the dealer or banker has as a fund from which to draw stakes and pay losses.
6. slanguncountableMoney; profit.

   Military dude was working for a drug dealer, right? and making good bank with it—he was making good money.

   2010, Paul Bouchard, Enlistment, page 113

7. countableIn certain games, such as dominos, a fund of pieces from which the players are allowed to draw.
8. countablein compoundsA safe and guaranteed place of storage for and retrieval of important items or goods.

   blood bank; data bank; sperm bank

9. countableA device used to store coins or currency.

   If you want to buy a bicycle, you need to put the money in your piggy bank.

10. countableentertainmentA collection of instrument data on a digital synthesizer.

    All of the drum kits are on bank 1.

present singular third person banks · participle present banking · participle past banked · past banked · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. intransitiveTo deal with a bank or financial institution, or for an institution to provide financial services to a client.

   He banked with Barclays.

   1 more example

   the sort of face you would happily bank with

   1979, Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2. transitiveTo put into a bank (financial institution).

   I’m going to bank the money.

3. transitiveTo store in a bank (storage).

   the procurement, banking or transplantation of cadaveric organs, eyes, or tissue

   2013 March 28, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HIPAA Administrative Simplification

4. slangtransitiveTo conceal in the rectum for use in prison.

   Johnny banked some coke for me.

5. transitivebusinessTo provide banking services to.

   For quotations using this term, see Citations:bank.

   1 more example

   They proposed an ambitious plan to bank people in remote rural communities.

plural banks · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. geographyAn edge of river, lake, or other watercourse.

   Tiber trembled underneath her banks.

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

   2 more examples

   On the opposite bank of the river other Chinese units attacked Taoshih and Yunmeng north-west of Hankow.

   1943 June 8, “Jap Remnants Suffer Heavy Casualties: Alerts In Chungking”, in The Bombay Chronicle, volume XXXI, number 134, page 1

   Just upstream of Dryburgh Abbey, a reproduction of a classical Greek temple stands at the top of a wooded hillock on the river’s north bank.

   2014 September 16, Ian Jack, “Is this the end of Britishness”, in The Guardian

2. geographyAn elevation under the sea; a shallow area of shifting sand, gravel, mud, and so forth

   the banks of Newfoundland

   Synonyms: bar

3. geographyA slope of earth, sand, etc.; an embankment.
4. aeronauticsThe incline of an aircraft, especially during a turn.
5. rail transportAn incline, a hill.

   This is the hardest duty on the railway, for the trains are heavy and there are some long 1 in 40 banks.

   1940 December, O. S. M. Raw, “The Rhodesia Railways—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 640

   1 more example

   It's just as quick out of the blocks. The five-car unit has three engines, giving it 2,820hp to play with, so the once-'feared' Devon banks of Hemerdon, Rattery and Dainton are child's play to these trains.

   2025 November 12, 'Mystery Shopper', “Is Devon the cream of the crop?”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 48

6. A mass of clouds.

   The bank of clouds on the horizon announced the arrival of the predicted storm front.

7. businessThe face of the coal at which miners are working.
8. businessA deposit of ore or coal, worked by excavations above water level.
9. businessThe ground at the top of a shaft.

   Ores are brought to bank.

present singular third person banks · participle present banking · participle past banked · past banked · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. intransitiveaeronauticsTo roll or incline laterally in order to turn.
2. transitiveTo cause (an aircraft) to bank.
3. transitiveTo form into a bank or heap, to bank up.

   to bank sand

4. intransitiveTo form a bank; to gather in masses.

   […] clouds banking above the gravel road, their flat slate-blue bottoms threatening freezing rain or an early snowfall.

   2011 December 14, Sandra Birdsell, The Chrome Suite, Emblem Editions, →ISBN

   Synonyms: bank up

5. transitiveTo cover the embers of a fire with ashes in order to retain heat.
6. transitiveTo raise a mound or dike about; to enclose, defend, or fortify with a bank; to embank.

   Aristoma∣chus would haue them to be stript from their leaues in winter, & in any hand to be banked well about, that the water stand not there in any hollow furrow or hole lower than the other ground

   1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “(please specify |book=I to XXXVII)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC

7. obsoletetransitiveTo pass by the banks of.

   Have I not heard these islanders shout out / Vive le roi! as I have banked their towns?

   c. 1595, William Shakespeare, King John, act 5, scene 2

8. UKrail transportTo provide additional power for a train ascending a bank (incline) by attaching another locomotive.

   Soon after leaving Bebra the line rises, mostly at 1 in 74, for 7 miles to Cornberg and all trains of over 400 tons are banked.

   1960 September, P. Ransome-Wallis, “Modern motive power of the German Federal Railway: Part One”, in Trains Ilustrated, page 558

   2 more examples

   Some interesting facts have recently been made known by the L.N.E.R. concerning the 178-ton Garratt 2-8-0 + 0-8-2 engine No. 2395, which since construction in 1925 has spent the whole of its working life banking coal trains up the 3 miles of 1 in 40 between Wentworth junction and West Silkstone, on the Worsborough branch, near Barnsley.

   1942 March, “Notes and News: Locomotive Notes”, in Railway Magazine, page 93

   [...] the 4-4-0 unhappily stalled after a stop on Reading Old Bank with its eight-coach load and the Reading Up Line pilot, a "Hall", had to bank the train into Reading General.

   1960 July, “Motive Power Miscellany: Western Region”, in Trains Illustrated, page 443

plural banks · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. A row or panel of items stored or grouped together.

   a bank of switches

   2 more examples

   a bank of pay phones

   Wanderers were finally woken from their slumber when Kevin Davies brought a fine save out of Brad Guzan while, minutes after the restart, Klasnic was blocked out by a bank of Villa defenders.

   2011 December 10, Marc Higginson, “Bolton 1 - 2 Aston Villa”, in BBC Sport

   Synonyms: line, rank, tier, grid, panel, block

2. A row of keys on a musical keyboard or the equivalent on a typewriter keyboard.
3. computingA contiguous block of memory that is of fixed, hardware-dependent size, but often larger than a page and partitioning the memory such that two distinct banks do not overlap.
4. pinballA set of multiple adjacent drop targets.

present singular third person banks · participle present banking · participle past banked · past banked · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. transitiveorder and arrangementTo arrange or order in a row.

plural banks · alternative obsolete banck · alternative obsolete bancke · alternative obsolete banke

1. A bench, as for rowers in a galley; also, a tier of oars.

   Placed on their banks, the lusty Trojans sweep / Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep.

   1658, Edmund Waller, he Passion of Dido for Æneas

2. A bench or seat for judges in court.
3. The regular term of a court of law, or the full court sitting to hear arguments upon questions of law, as distinguished from a sitting at nisi prius, or a court held for jury trials. See banc
4. archaicmediaA kind of table used by printers.
5. entertainmentA bench, or row of keys belonging to a keyboard, as in an organ.

1. A village in the New Forest in Hampshire, England.
2. rail transportA major London Underground station in the City of London, named after the Bank of England and one of the busiest stations on the network (OS grid ref TQ3281)

   1 more example

   Anybody familiar with the London Underground network will know that Bank Tube station is a place to be avoided - if at all possible - on a weekday morning. Located at the very heart of London's 'Square Mile' financial district, some 70,000 people detrain there during the morning peak, to pass through its gatelines and those at the adjoining station at Monument. A further 50,000 passengers squeeze into the station complex at exactly the same time of day, in order to change between the five lines that pass through it.

   2019 October 23, Paul Stephen delivers a progress report on London Underground's transformative Bank Station capacity upgrade, Rail, page 68

plural Banks

1. A surname.