tontine
/tɒnˈtiːn/noun
tontine is a noun meaning “A form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-O-N-T-I-N-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tontine is tontines.
What does tontine mean?
noun
- 1
A form of investment in which, on the death of an investor, his share is divided amongst the other investors.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce tontine?
- UK /tɒnˈtiːn/
- UK /ˈtɒnˌtiːn/
- /ˈtɒntaɪn/
Tontine has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-tontine.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of tontine
- tontines plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is tontine?
Tontine appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 125,655th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Tontine in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Translations:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does tontine come from?
From French tontine, named after Lorenzo de Tonti, who introduced the scheme into France in around 1653. Thus, from Tonti + -ine.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).