tontine
English edit
Etymology edit
From French tontine, named after Lorenzo de Tonti, who introduced the scheme into France in around 1653. Can be decomposed as Tonti + -ine.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
tontine (plural tontines)
- (finance, insurance) A form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors.
- 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, chapter 1, in The Wrong Box[1]:
- When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads in white-frilled trousers, their father—a well-to-do merchant in Cheapside—caused them to join a small but rich tontine of seven-and-thirty lives.
- 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 634:
- There were many speculative schemes which gambled on the expectation of an individual's life, as in the tontine system, whereby all the group's contributions went to the last survivor.
- 2000, JG Ballard, Super-Cannes, Fourth Estate, published 2011, page 237:
- They were pleasantly high, but in an almost self-conscious way, as if they were members of a tontine blessed by the unexpected death of two or three of its members.
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
See also edit
- dead pool (a misnomer for tontine)
Anagrams edit
French edit
Etymology edit
From Tonti + -ine From Lorenzo Tonti, Napoleonic banker, who proposed this scheme to Jules Mazarin in 1653.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
tontine f (plural tontines)
Derived terms edit
Descendants edit
- → English: tontine
Further reading edit
- “tontine”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.