income

From Middle English income, perhaps continuing (in altered form) Old English incyme (“an in-coming, entrance”), equivalent to in- +‎ come. Cognate with Dutch inkomen (“income, earnings, gainings”), German Einkommen (“income, earnings, competence”), Icelandic innkváma (“income”), Danish indkomst (“income”), Swedish inkomst (“income”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪnˌkʌm/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

income (countable and uncountable, plural incomes)

1. Money one earns by working or by capitalising on the work of others.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground.

   • 2010 December 4, Evan Thomas, “Why It’s Time to Worry”, in Newsweek, retrieved 16 June 2013:

     In 1970 the richest 1 percent made 9 percent of the nation’s income; now that top slice makes closer to 25 percent.

   • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19:

     It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

2. (business, commerce) Money coming in to a fund, account, or policy.
3. (obsolete) A coming in; arrival; entrance; introduction.
   • 1667, George Rust, A Funeral Sermon, preached at the obsequies of […] Jeremy Lord Bishop of Down:

     more abundant incomes of light and strength from God

   • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC:

     Pain payes the income of ech precious thing,

4. (archaic or dialectal, Scotland) A newcomer or arrival; an incomer.
5. (obsolete) An entrance-fee.
6. (archaic) A coming in as by influx or inspiration, hence, an inspired quality or characteristic, as courage or zeal; an inflowing principle.
   • [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; republished as The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volumes (please specify the book number), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, →OCLC:

     I would then make in indeed and steep / My income in their bloods.

     The spelling has been modernized.

7. (UK dialectal, Scotland) A disease or ailment without known or apparent cause, as distinguished from one induced by accident or contagion; an oncome.
8. That which is taken into the body as food; the ingesta; sometimes restricted to the nutritive, or digestible, portion of the food.

• (antonym(s) of “money coming in”): outgo

• come in, omenic