lot
Definitions
Accounting
Banking
- noun a piece of land, especially one to be used for redevelopment
Commerce
- noun a large quantity
Construction
- A parcel of land that is established by a survey or delineated on a recorded plot.
Forex
- A standard unit of size used in a financial transaction. In the stock market a lot represents 100 shares of stock, in the bond or derivatives market, a lot can represent $1,000 of face value of the bond or derivative contract. In forex, a lot generally represents 100,000 units of a base currency.
Media Studies
- noun a film studio and the land that belongs to it
Real Estate
- noun a small area of land that has fixed boundaries
- noun an item or group of items on sale at an auction
Origin & History of “lot”
Lot goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlut-, which appears to have denoted the use of objects to make decisions by chance (Old English hlot was used for such an object). The first inklings of the modern range of senses did not emerge until the 18th century, when lot began to be used for a ‘set of things’. ‘Large number, many’ followed in the 19th century. The Germanic word was borrowed into the romance languages, and of its descendants English has acquired allot (16th c.) (from Old French) and lotto (18th c.) (from Italian). Lottery (16th c.) comes from the Dutch derivative loterij.
