Etymology: < Anglo-Norman finaunce, Anglo-Norman and Middle French, French finance ending (a1253 in Anglo-Norman, first half of the 14th cent. in continental French), payment (c1280), monetary resources of a sovereign or state (1314), money (mid 14th cent.), ransom (late 14th cent. or earlier), management of the state revenues (late 14th cent.), money or other resources available to a person (early 15th cent.) < finer to end, to settle a dispute or a debt, to pay ransom, to bargain for, to furnish, procure (see fine v.¹) + -ance -ance suffix.Foreign-language parallels. Compare post-classical Latin financia, finantia payment, settlement, money (from 14th cent. in British (frequently) and continental sources), Old Occitan finança, finansa, Catalan finança (1344, earliest in the sense ‘settlement of a debt’), Spanish finanza (mid 13th cent. in the sense ‘ending’, 15th cent. in the senses ‘ransom’ and ‘state revenue’), Portuguese finança (late 16th cent.), Italian finanza (late 13th cent. both in the sense ‘ending’ and in the sense ‘settlement of a debt’); also Middle Dutch, Dutch financie, Middle Low German financie, German Finanz (a1355 as financien (plural), earliest in the sense ‘shadowy financial transactions, usury’). History of position of stress. While Johnson (1755) already marks the stress on the first syllable, all editions of Bailey (1721–90) have the stress on the second syllable, which N.E.D. (1897) considered as ‘now usual’.

Etymology: Probably an alteration (with suffix substitution: see -ance suffix) of finesse n. (compare sense 1a at that entry). Compare later fineness n. 2a. Dict. Older Sc. Tongue takes this word as a specific semantic development of finance n.¹, but this would be difficult to account for. Nor is there any evidence for an Anglo-Norman or Middle French noun *finance in the sense ‘fineness’.

Etymology: < finance n.¹Compare Middle French, French financer to supply (a person or organization) with finances or money (1544), early modern Dutch †financeeren to borrow money (1573).