clearing house

4 definitions found

clearing house - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Clearing \Clear"ing\, n.
     1. The act or process of making clear.
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              The better clearing of this point.    --South.
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     2. A tract of land cleared of wood for cultivation.
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              A lonely clearing on the shores of Moxie Lake. --J.
                                                    Burroughs.
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     3. A method adopted by banks and bankers for making an
        exchange of checks held by each against the others, and
        settling differences of accounts.
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     Note: In England, a similar method has been adopted by
           railroads for adjusting their accounts with each other.
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     4. The gross amount of the balances adjusted in the clearing
        house.
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     Clearing house, the establishment where the business of
        clearing is carried on. See above, 3.
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clearing house - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  clearing house
      n 1: a central collection place where banks exchange checks or
           drafts; participants maintain an account against which
           credits or debits are posted

clearing house - Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) :

  CLEARING HOUSE, com. law. Among the English bankers, the clearing house is  
  a place in Lombard street, in London, where the bankers of that city daily 
  settle with each other the balances which they owe, or to which they are 
  entitled. Desks are placed around the room, one of which is appropriated to 
  each banking house, and they are: occupied in alphabetical order. Each clerk 
  has a box or drawer along side of him, and the name of the house he 
  represents is inscribed over his head. A clerk of each house comes in about 
  half past three o'clock in the afternoon, and brings the drafts or checks on 
  the other bankers, which have been paid by his house that day, and deposits 
  them in their proper drawers. The clerk at the desk credits their accounts 
  separately which they have against him, as found in the drawer. Balances are 
  thus struck from all the accounts, and the claims transferred from one to 
  another, until they are so wound up and cancelled, that each clerk has only 
  to settle with two or three others, and the balances are immediately paid. 
  When drafts are paid at so late an hour that they cannot be cleared that 
  day, they are sent to the houses on which they are drawn, to be marked, that 
  is, a memorandum is made on them, and they are to be cleared the next day. 
  See Gilbert's Practical Treatise on Banking, pp. 16-20, Babbage on the 
  Economy of Machines, n. 173, 174; Kelly's Cambist; Byles, on Bills, 106, 
  110; Pulling's Laws and Customs of London, 437. 
  
  

clearing house - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  23 Moby Thesaurus words for "clearing house":
     Bank of England, Bank of France, Federal Reserve bank,
     International Monetary Fund, Lombard Street bank, Swiss bank,
     World Bank, bank, branch bank, central bank, commercial bank,
     farm loan bank, federal land bank, investment bank, member bank,
     moneyed corporation, mutual savings bank, national bank,
     nonmember bank, reserve bank, savings bank, state bank,
     trust company