May 26, 2013

tontine • \TAHN-teen\  • noun
: a joint financial arrangement whereby the participants usually contribute equally to a prize that is awarded entirely to the participant who survives all the others
Examples:
In the author’s latest suspense novel, the participants in a secret tontine begin to show up dead—one by one.

“He had become interested in an insurance scheme called a tontine, in which people pool their money and the last survivor gets the whole pot. But tontines were now illegal.” —From Alice Schroeder’s 2008 book The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.

***Definitions provided by Merriam-Webster Dictionary App.