cash register

American  

noun

cash registers plural

1. a business machine that indicates to customers the amounts of individual sales, has a money drawer from which to make change, records and totals receipts, and may automatically calculate the change due.

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cash register British  

noun

1. a till with a keyboard that operates a mechanism for displaying and adding the amounts of cash received in individual sales

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• cash registers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of cash register

An Americanism dating back to 1875–80

Example Sentences

Waking up early, pricing items, setting up tables and manning the cash register — all of this is, as you say, labor.

From MarketWatch • May 28, 2026

The car business is the cash register that funds the empire.

From MarketWatch • Jan. 15, 2026

The finish line isn’t moral resolution, but the banality of the cash register: a product governed where it matters most, at the point of sale.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 9, 2026

The project was commissioned as part of the La Plaza shopping complex by Julia Carnell, the heiress to a national cash register empire based in Dayton, Ohio.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 9, 2025

He stood behind the cash register, and his face contracted and hardened as he tried to recall the things that had happened during the night.

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers