tontine

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“
The tontine is a scheme for raising money on a long-term basis by weighting rewards in favour of the longest lasting contributors.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun An investment plan in which participants buy shares in a common fund and receive an annuity that increases every time a participant dies, with the entire fund going to the final survivor or to those who survive after a specified time.
  2. noun Each member's share of a tontine.
  3. noun The subscribers to a tontine.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • A group of quirky stock characters gather to solve the family tontine, a riddle revealing the location of the family fortune in the spooky Leduc family mansion in dreary England.
  • She then invested her savings in "sou-sou" (a form of community banking similar to our 'kuttu' or tontine) and in two years saved enough to buy a one-way ticket to the United States.
  • The tontine is a scheme for raising money on a long-term basis by weighting rewards in favour of the longest lasting contributors. —  Propeller Most Popular Stories
  • They work, I am told, with a kind of tontine--it is, in fact, a lottery. —  As We Are and As We May Be
  • Formerly the majority of policies paid "deferred" dividends after 5, 10, or 20 years, according to various tontine and semi-tontine plans, the survivors to these periods receiving their dividends plus those of the other policyholders who had died or had withdrawn from the company. —  Modern Economic Problems Economics Volume II
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This word has been looked up 81 times.

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, after Lorenzo Tonti (1635-1690?), Italian-born French banker.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French tontine =Greek tontine, from Italian tontina, tontine, a life-insurance office; so called from Lorenzo Tonti, a Neapolitan banker, who originated the scheme (about 1653).
 

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/tɑnˈtin/
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