Caisses

Caisses is the plural of the French noun caisse, a term with several related meanings tied to the idea of a container or fund. The word comes from Old French caisse, which in turn derives from the Latin capsa meaning box or case.

In everyday use, caisses most often refer to boxes or crates used for storage and transport. A caisse can be a wooden box, a metal container, or a crate of various sizes, used for packaging goods, shipping produce, or protecting items during handling. The term is common in agriculture, logistics, and retail to describe containers for merchandise or payloads.

In retail and accounting, la caisse denotes the cash-collection point and the money kept on hand. A caisse enregistreuse is a cash register; phrases like ouvrir la caisse (open the cash register) or tenir la caisse (manage the cash) are common in commerce. The money on hand, or petty cash, is also referred to as la caisse, and many businesses manage a fonds de caisse, a petty-cash fund, to handle small payments and change.

Caisses can also refer to funds or treasury bodies within organizations or administrations. For example, caisses publiques or caisses de retraite describe public or pension funds, and the term appears in names of financial institutions such as Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in France. Beyond containers and cash, caisses thus encompass a range of concepts linked by the idea of a secured holding, whether physical or financial.