Cheque

Cheque (pronounced chek)

(1) A bill, debenture, coupon, IOU, receipt, warrant, order or bond (all now rare).

(2) A bill of exchange drawn on a bank by the holder of a current account; payable into a bank account, if crossed, or on demand, if uncrossed.

(3) In agricultural jargon (Australian and NZ), the total sum of money received for contract work or a crop; a slang term for wages.

1828: From the Middle English chek & chekke, borrowed from the Old French eschek, eschec & eschac, from the Medieval Latin scaccus, a borrowing from the Arabic شَاه‎ (šāh), from the Persian شاه‎ (šâh) (king) from the primitive-Indo-Iranian kšáyati (he rules, he has power over), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European tek- (to gain power over, gain control over).  The first cheque book was issued in England in 1872, the first checking account in the US offered in 1897.  The meaning as a negotiable instrument for the transfer of money comes from check in the sense of a means of verification (ie a check against forgery or fraud) and was influenced by exchequer, from Old French eschequier.  Chèque is the French spelling, chequé the Spanish.

Crooked Hillary Clinton summing up her campaign strategy.

Check is the original spelling, cheque coming into use in 1828 when James William Gilbart (1794-1863) published his Practical Treatise on Banking.  The spellings check, checque, and cheque were used interchangeably between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries but cheque became the standard form for the financial instrument in the Commonwealth and Ireland, while check is used only for other meanings, thus distinguishing the two definitions in writing.  The Americans, preferring the spelling check for all purposes lost this; one of the rare examples where the American spelling of English words incurs a disadvantage.

Lindsay Lohan with novelty check (cheque), part of a protest on Billy Eichner’s “Billy on the Street” piece about about a television show being cancelled, New York, 2014.  The piece didn't result in the show returning for another season but did succeed in the demolition of a Volvo so there's that.