a treasury, as of a state or nation.
(in Great Britain)
(often initial capital letter) the governmental department in charge of the public revenues.
(formerly) an office administering the royal revenues and determining all cases affecting them.
Also called Court of Exchequer. (initial capital letter) an ancient common-law court of civil jurisdiction in which cases affecting the revenues of the crown were tried, now merged in the King's Bench Division of the High Court.
Informal. one's financial resources; funds.
I'd love to go, but the exchequer is a bit low.
(often capital) government (in Britain and certain other countries) the accounting department of the Treasury, responsible for receiving and issuing funds
informal personal funds; finances
1250–1300; Middle English escheker, eschequier < Anglo-French escheker, eschekier ( Old French eschequier ) chessboard, counting table. See checker 1
Exchequer is a British term for the individual in the government who is in charge of the money: the treasurer. Sometimes it refers to the office in which all the money is kept, the treasury itself. If you follow British government, you may have noticed that although they have a democracy much like ours, some things are very different. One of them is that the person in the government who is in charge of the government's finances, the Treasury Secretary, is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The word has been around for a long time. There were exchequers in medieval England, back when exchequer offices worked for kings.
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The family of Pitt, earl of Chatham, bore ‘Sable, a fesse chequy argent and azure, between three bezants or pieces of money,’ in allusion to the office the original grantee held in the EXCHEQUER.
From The Curiosities of Heraldry by Lower, Mark Antony
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
