Search Result for "clearing house":
Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

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


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Clearing \Clear"ing\, n. 1. The act or process of making clear. [1913 Webster] The better clearing of this point. --South. [1913 Webster] 2. A tract of land cleared of wood for cultivation. [1913 Webster] A lonely clearing on the shores of Moxie Lake. --J. Burroughs. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] Note: In England, a similar method has been adopted by railroads for adjusting their accounts with each other. [1913 Webster] 4. The gross amount of the balances adjusted in the clearing house. [1913 Webster] Clearing house, the establishment where the business of clearing is carried on. See above, 3. [1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

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
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
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.