invest [LME] The root of invest is Latin vestis ‘clothes’, also the source of vest [LME], and which shares an Indo-European root with wear [OE]. Latin investire meant ‘to put clothes on someone’, and this was the sense of invest when it entered English in the mid 16th century. Someone being formally installed in a job or office would once have been ceremonially dressed in special clothing, and this is behind the sense ‘to formally confer a rank or office on someone’. The main modern use of the word is financial—putting money into a commercial venture with the expectation of profit. This came into English under the influence of a related Italian word in the early 17th century, apparently through a comparison between putting money into various enterprises and dressing it in a variety of clothing.