question: How's 'something given in payment' related to the other meanings of 'consideration'?
comment: Edit: this is my very basic understanding and I am not in the financial industry so if I’ve got anything incorrect here please correct me! I believe This comes from really early days where you can pay for something in cash, or you can pay for something in ‘consideration or kind.’ ‘Kind’ means you swap your goods/trade for their goods/trade. Consideration in its most basic form means that you owe someone a favour. So if you’re a baker and you provide someone with a loaf of bread, then they get a cow and you need milk you would expect them to ‘consider’ what they have been given. Think about how your definition of ‘consideration’ means to ‘take something into account.’ This is exactly what ‘accounting’ is in its early form - keeping track of what people owe each other. Of course people pretty well use money nowadays and laws have tightened around this as consideration isn’t a very reliable method so it’s nowhere near as relevant as it used to be. Does that answer your question? Edit: fixed typo
passages: An exception to this rule is where there is a duty owed to a third party. An act done before the giving of a promise to make a payment or to confer some other benefit can sometimes be consideration for the promise. For this to hold, three conditions must be satisfied (Pao On v Lau Yiu Long [1980]):
  
  BULLET::::1. The act must have been done at the promisor’s request
  
  BULLET::::2. The parties must have understood the act was to be remunerated either by a payment or the conferment of some other benefit
   Consideration in English law
  
  Consideration is an English common law concept within the law of contract, and is a necessity for simple contracts (but not for special contracts by deed). The concept of consideration has been adopted by other common law jurisdictions, including the US.
  
  Consideration can be anything of value (such as an goods, money, services, or promises of any of these), which each party gives as a quid pro quo to support their side of the bargain. Mutual promises constitute consideration for each other.
   Consideration
  
  Consideration is a concept of English common law and is a necessity for simple contracts but not for special contracts (contracts by deed). The concept has been adopted by other common law jurisdictions, including the US.
   BULLET::::- "Currie v Misa" Lush J. referred to consideration as consisting of a detriment to the promisee or a benefit to the promisor: ""... some right, interest, profit or benefit accruing to one party, or some forbearance, detriment, loss or responsibility given, suffered or undertaken by the other.""
   Each of these ten sorts of price ideas referred to different social relations. Each social relationship, in turn, involves some kind of transaction - an exchange, an investment, an award, a grant, a fine, a disbursement or transfer, a compensation payment etc. The word "transaction" is itself derived from the Latin "transactionem", meaning an "agreement", "an accomplishment", "a done deal". The Latin word "transactor" refers to the mediator or intermediary operative in some kind of deal, and "transactus" means "pierced", "penetrated", or "stuck through" (many Roman coins had holes through them, for storage on a string, or decorative purposes).
   A party that "already" has a legal duty to provide money, an object, a service, or a forbearance, does not provide consideration when promising merely to uphold that duty. That legal duty can arise from law, or obligation under a previous contract.
   Section::::Legal rules regarding consideration.
  
  There are a number of common issues as to whether consideration exists in a contract:
  
  BULLET::::1. Part payment is not good consideration
  
  BULLET::::2. Consideration must move from the promisee but need not flow to the promisor
  
  BULLET::::3. Consideration must be sufficient but need not be adequate
  
  BULLET::::4. Consideration cannot be illusory
  
  BULLET::::5. Consideration must not be past. Past consideration is not good consideration
  
  BULLET::::6. Moral consideration is not sufficient (except for contracts by deed, where "love and affection" is often cited as the [unnecessary] consideration)
  
  BULLET::::7. Performance of existing duties is not good consideration
   Consideration may be thought of as the concept of value offered and accepted by people or organisations entering into contracts. Anything of value promised by one party to the other when making a contract can be treated as "consideration": for example, if A signs a contract to buy a car from B for $5,000, A's consideration is the $5,000, and B's consideration is the car.
   The reason that both exist in common law jurisdictions is thought by leading scholars to be the result of the combining by 19th century judges of two distinct threads: first the consideration requirement was at the heart of the action of assumpsit, which had grown up in medieval times and remained the normal action for breach of a simple contract in England and Wales until 1884, when the old forms of action were abolished; secondly, the notion of agreement between two or more parties as being the essential legal and moral foundation of contract in all legal systems, was promoted by the 18th century French writer Pothier in his "Traite des Obligations", much read (especially after translation into English in 1805) by English judges and jurists. The latter chimed well with the fashionable will theories of the time, especially John Stuart Mill's influential ideas on free will, and got grafted on to the traditional common law requirement for consideration to ground an action in assumpsit.
   Consideration is the central concept in the common law of contracts and is required, in most cases, for a contract to be enforceable. Consideration is the price one pays for another's promise. It can take a number of forms: money, property, a promise, the doing of an act, or even refraining from doing an act. In broad terms, if one agrees to do something he was not otherwise legally obligated to do, it may be said that he has given consideration. For example, Jack agrees to sell his car to Jill for $100. Jill's payment of $100 (or her promise to do so) is the consideration for Jack's promise to give Jill the car, and Jack's promise to give Jill the car is consideration for Jill's payment of $100.
   In "Dunlop v. Selfridge" Lord Dunedin adopted Pollack's metaphor of purchase and sale to explain consideration. He called consideration 'the price for which the promise of the other is bought'.
   Generally past consideration is not sufficient consideration but a past service performed at the request of the promisor with an implication they will be paid for is sufficient consideration for a subsequent promise to pay for them.
   Courts will typically not weigh the "adequacy" of consideration provided the consideration is determined to be "sufficient", with sufficiency defined as meeting the test of law, whereas "adequacy" is the subjective fairness or equivalence. For instance, agreeing to sell a car for a penny may constitute a binding contract (although if the transaction is an attempt to avoid tax, it will be treated by the tax authority as though a market price had been paid). Parties may do this for tax purposes, attempting to disguise gift transactions as contracts. This is known as the "peppercorn rule", but in some jurisdictions, the penny may constitute legally insufficient "nominal consideration". An exception to the rule of adequacy is money, whereby a debt must always be paid in full for "accord and satisfaction".
   The traces of the law relating to assumpsit are still felt today, particularly in the law of contract and unjust enrichment. For example, consideration is only necessary in relation to simple contracts. Where a claimant brings an action in contract for non-performance of a promise contained in a deed, there is no need to show that the claimant supplied consideration for the promise. The reason for this is historical: where there was no deed, the correct action was assumpsit for nonfeasance; in the latter, in debt "sur obligation". These were two distinct forms of action with their own distinct procedural requirements.
   There are three main purposes cited for the consideration requirement. The first is the cautionary requirement - parties are more likely to look before they leap when making a bargain than when making an off-the-cuff promise of a gift. The second is the evidentiary requirement - parties are more likely to commemorate, or at least remember, a promise made due to a bargaining process. The third is the channeling requirement - parties are more likely to coherently stipulate their specific desires when they are forced to bargain for them. Each of these rationales ensure that contracts are made by serious parties and are not made in error.
   This is true unless the debtor provided fresh consideration for the promise. The following, mentioned in "Pinnel's Case", and confirmed by "Sibree v. Tripp", may amount to fresh consideration:
  
  BULLET::::1. If the promisee offers part payment earlier than full payment was due, and this is of benefit to the creditor;
  
  BULLET::::2. If the promisee offers part payment at a different place than where full payment was due, and this is of benefit to the creditor; or,
   Consideration must be "sufficient", but courts do not weigh the "adequacy" of consideration, partially because in a capitalistic society private parties are entitled and expected to determine the value of things for themselves. In other words, the things being exchanged must have "some" value in the eyes of the law, but the general rule is that courts do not care "how much". Love and affection, for example, would not constitute sufficient consideration, but a penny would. However, sufficient consideration that is grossly inadequate may be deemed unconscionable, discussed below.
   "Consideration" in this context means that a promise is given in return for a promise received. The usage of the word derives from expressions such as: "I will give you ten pounds in consideration of the apples you are delivering to me."
  
  Joint promisees: Consideration given in return for a promise must move from the promisee; where there are joint promisees in a contract, consideration may be provided by one on behalf of both of them, or consideration may be provided by both promisees.
   Section::::Lack of Consideration.
  
  BULLET::::- Past consideration is not valid. Something that is already done is done, and it does not change the legal position of the promisor. Any goods or services to be exchanged must be exchanged at or after the time of contract formation.
  
  BULLET::::- Preexisting duty does not count as consideration.
   Section::::Purposes of Consideration.
   The root word "pay" in "payment" comes from the Latin "pacare" (to pacify), from "pax", meaning "peace". In the Middle Ages, the term began to be used more broadly, to mean "to pacify one's creditors". As the Latin word was made part of Old French "paier", it retained the meaning "appease" but gained the meaning "to pay" (as in paying a debt). The Middle English word "payen", which came from French, was also used in both ways.
  
  Section::::Methods.
   BULLET::::3. If the promisee pays the debt in part by another chattel (note, however, that part payment by cheque, where full payment was due by another means, is not consideration.)
  
  Another exception is that part payment of the debt by a third party as consideration for a promise to discharge the creditor from the full sum, prevents the creditor then suing the debtor for full payment (see "Welby v Drake").
   In "Roscorla v Thomas", Roscorla had contracted to buy a horse from Thomas for £30. After the sale, Thomas promised Roscorla that the horse was sound; the horse turned out to be vicious. It was held that Roscorla could not enforce the promise, as the consideration given for entering into the contract to buy the horse had been completed by the time the promise was made; in a sense, the consideration was "used up".
   The rule that past consideration is not good consideration is subject to the exception discussed by the Privy Council in "Pao On v Lau Yiu Long". In that case, their Lordships held that past consideration can be good consideration where:
  
  BULLET::::1. The promisee performed the original act at the request of the promisor;
  
  BULLET::::2. It was clearly understood or implied between the parties that the promisee would be rewarded for the performance of the act;
   Consideration for a promise can be the performance of a contractual duty owed to someone other than the promisor. In "Shadwell v Shadwell", Cayley Shadwell was under a contractual duty with a third party to marry. His uncle, Charles Shadwell promised to pay him £150 per year after he was married. It was held that Cayley Shadwell marrying was good consideration, notwithstanding that he was obliged by a contract with a third party to marry in any event.
  