Money vs Monies

Question

How would the meaning in the following phrase change if "monies" is replaced with "money"?

universities would be diverted from basic research by the lure of new development monies from “the marketplace,”

Answer 1

Garner in Modern American Usage has a good entry on this. He says:

While money generally functions in collective senses (we made a lot of money on that deal), moneys is frequently used, especially in financial and legal contexts, to denote "discrete sums of money" or "funds" (many federal and state moneys were budgeted for disaster relief).

So if you want to emphasise that the funds are coming from various sources, use the plural moneys or monies, otherwise use money as the more common and unmarked variant.

Answer 2

The collective noun dilemma again.

• Soil or soils
• Money or monies
• Equipment or equipments
• Furniture or furnitures
• Fish or fishes
• Data or datas
• Schema or Schemas

?

Illustration

Soils = types of soil

He is a soil expert. He is looking at all the soil in my farm. He has seen the soils of all the farms in this area. In fact, he has seen most of the soils in almost every region in the world.

Monies = instances of money

We have paid good money to bribe the corrupt officials of this town. We have paid good money in many villages and towns. Of all the corrupt monies we have paid, this one is the best.

Equipments = instances of equipment

We will be moving all their office equipment to their new office. We also have to move their manufacturing equipment. They may plan to move their network equipment too. Of all the equipments, their manufacturing equipment is the most difficult to move.

IMO, the plurality of instances of equipment should still be "equipment" not "equipments".

Datas & Schemas? Why can't the engineers in Google and Microsoft get it? That

• singular = datum, plural = data (no such thing as datas until they invented the word)
• singular = schema, plural = schemata (Got it???!!!!!)

Answer 3

Money is the more logical and the preferred form, but monies is a frequent variant.

In the "Oxford Dictionary of English", Second Edition, Revised - eBook Copyright 2010, we read:

(moneys or monies) FORMAL sums of money.

Also, in "The New Oxford American Dictionary", Second Edition - eBook Copyright 2008, we read:

monies: plural form of MONEY, as used in financial context.

Considering that your sentence is not expressed in financial context, I would say that money fits better your case.

Answer 4

Use monies when referring to money collected from different countries' denominations. Otherwise, money is considered plural (just look in your wallet)! That's not a collection of monies, but an assortment of money (US dollars/cents). Universities may collect tuition for national and international students. Thus, they've collected monies; national and international funds.