Definition

• in commerce, signifies ready money, or actual coin paid on the instant, and in this sense it has been in use since the latter part of the sixteenth century. The etymology appears to be from the French word caisse, a coffer or chest in which money was kept.

  Two early instances of the use of the term are to be found in Saffron Walden, by Thomas Nashe, 1596 (106), to wit, " He put his hand in his pocket but . . . not to pluck out anie cash ; " and in Shake- speare 's King Henry V (ii. 1, 120).

Source

• Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)

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