central bank

American  

noun

1. a bank, as the Federal Reserve Bank, that holds basic banking reserves, issues currency, and acts as lender of last resort and controller of credit.

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central bank British  

noun

1. a national bank that does business mainly with a government and with other banks: it regulates the volume and cost of credit

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Etymology

Origin of central bank

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

central bank

Their economists expect its central bank, the Bank of Canada, to keep interest rates at 2.25% well into 2027 and possibly into 2028.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 25, 2026

Meanwhile, Iran’s central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, said the U.S. had already done all that it can against Iran and that the central bank had been shoring up its foreign currency reserves for months.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026

Carney, a former central bank governor in Canada and the U.K., earned praise for guiding those countries through the 2008 global financial crisis and Brexit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026

The forecasts became public only years later, by which point he had left the central bank.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026

One kind of monetary policy, which involves the central bank buying private assets, is chunked as quantitative easing.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker