ready money

plural ready moneys · plural ready monies

1. uncountableusuallybusinessMoney held ready for payment, or actually paid, at the time of a transaction.

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

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia, page 84

   4 more examples

   [A] yong Freſh-water ſoldier that neuer before followed theſe ſtrange warres, and yet hath a Charge newly giuen him (by the old fellow Soldado Vecchio his father, when Death had ſhotte him into the Graue) of ſome ten or twelve thouſand in ready money, beſides ſo many hundreds a yeare: […]

   1609, Thomas Dekker, “Lanthorne and Candle-light. Or, The Bell-man’s Second Nights-walke. […] The Second Edition, […]: Chapter 2”, in Alexander B[alloch] Grosart, editor, The Non-dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. […] (The Huth Library), volume III, London; Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: […] [Hazell, Watson, & Viney] for private circulation only, published 1885, →OCLC, pages 225–226

   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.

   1886 May, Thomas Hardy, chapter XIV, in The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC

   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.

   1895, Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest […] , [Act I]

   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.

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