descompte

Old French descompte combined des- (away, from) with compter (to count), from Latin computare (to calculate). To discount was to deduct, to count away, to subtract from a total. The word entered English in the seventeenth century primarily as a financial term: discounting a bill of exchange meant paying less than its face value in exchange for early payment. A merchant who needed cash now could sell a bill due in six months at a discount — receiving, say, ninety pounds for a hundred-pound note.

The Bank of England's discount rate — the interest rate at which it lent to commercial banks — became one of the most important financial numbers in the world by the nineteenth century. The word discount named the mechanism by which central banks controlled money supply. Discounting was not a bargain; it was a sophisticated financial transaction. Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street (1873) treats the discount rate as the heartbeat of Victorian finance.

Retail discount came later. Department stores in the late nineteenth century began offering marked-down prices as a sales strategy. The word migrated from banking to shopping. 'Discount store' appeared as a category in the 1950s — Kmart, Walmart, and Target were all 'discount retailers,' selling goods below traditional department store prices. The financial verb became a marketing adjective.

Today, discount dominates retail vocabulary. Black Friday discounts, promo codes, clearance sales, flash sales — the word is everywhere. Its financial sense persists in 'discount rate' and 'discounted cash flow,' but most English speakers encounter discount at a checkout counter, not a bank window. The mathematical operation — counting away from the total — is unchanged. The context shifted from finance to commerce.