revenue [LME] The word revenue is from Old French revenu(e) meaning ‘returned’, from Latin revenire ‘return’, from re- ‘back’ and venire ‘come’. An obsolete and rare use was ‘return to a place’; it was more commonly ‘yield from lands and property’, what would today be called a return on your investment. Venue [ME] is an obvious relative. It was first used as a term for ‘an attack’ and later as a legal term meaning ‘the county or district within which a legal case must be heard’. The sense of a place for entertainment only dates from the 1960s. Avenue [E17th] which at first meant ‘way of approaching a problem’ is another relative. It then developed a mainly military sense of a way to access a place, and from that a formal approach to a country house. Only in the middle of the 19th century did it become a term for a wide street.