Definition of "rate of interest" []

• The percentage of a sum of money charged for its use (noun)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was 20%; the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the Egyptians only stepped in to prevent more than 100%."
• "The greater part of this sum, which had been borrowed at a high rate of interest from native usurers, had been spent in assisting Abdallah Pasha, the family of the Sheikh Beshyr, and many other victims of political malignity."
• "As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest -- fifty or sixty per cent.: which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy."