cambism

English

Noun

cambism (uncountable)

1. (rare) The business of currency exchange.
   • 1842, Nathaniel Whittock, The Complete Book of Trades:

     He will there find observations on trading correspondence, and the art of letter writing, on the authors who have written pro forma invoices, bills, &c.; those on law, on cambism, and the operations in exchanges.

   • 1925, A.S. Baxendale, Currency : an indictment, page 141:

     ... to misconception of the involutions of cambism, underlying the assumptions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as expressed in his speech on the Gold Standard Bill on May 4, 1925.

   • 1978, Michael Beenstock, The foreign exchanges: theory, modelling, and policy, page 24:

     A more hybrid approach, e.g. Spraos [1972], is that Cambism may on the whole be realistic when speculation is not rife.

   • 1999, Tom De Herdt, Stefaan Marysse, “The Reinvention of the market from below: the end of the women's money changing monopoly in Kinshasa”, in Review of African Political Economy, volume 26, number 80:

     Even if a cambiste is already considered much more than an ordinary river merchant, the work remains incompatible with 'tradition', which expects respectable women to withdraw from public life (La Fontaine, 1974:956). Note the double morality surrounding cambism...

Related terms

• cambist
• cambistry