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"To Coin a Phrase," by Ken Bressett

DentuckDentuck Posts: 3,819 ✭✭✭
in World & Ancient Coins Forum
Money terms are used in everyday expressions with little thought about their origin. "Filthy lucre," "put in your two cents," "pin money," "a sawbuck," "passing the buck"—all are common phrases related to money. Collectors like to reflect on what they mean and how they entered the English language. Some are obscure, some are self-evident, others have interesting backgrounds. One that is frequently overlooked is the derivation of the word gazette, often used as the name of a newspaper.

Few people know that today’s gazette comes from a Venetian coin of the 17th century. The coin was a


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Comments

  • newbiecollectornewbiecollector Posts: 2,992
    I didn't click your continue link..........
    You post was inytresting but it confused me
    Becoming informed but still trying to learn every day!
    1-Dammit Boy Oct 14,2003

    International Coins
    "A work in progress"


    Wayne
    eBay registered name:
    Hard_ Search (buyer/bidder, a small time seller)
    e-mail: wayne.whatley@gmail.com
  • Rickc300Rickc300 Posts: 876 ✭✭
    I found it interesting and it got me thinking about all the different slang terms we use for money. (I followed the link) Shave and a hair cut 2 bits (a quarter) from a piece of eight... I am sure there must be hundreds more. Sounds like an interesting thread and I hope others chime in others they have heard.
    Dead Presidents, clams, lettuce, moola etc. The reference to dead presidents should be pretty obvious from currency and coinage of the US but the others? Who knows...

    Rick
    Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed lamb contesting that vote. Benjamin Franklin - 1779

    image
    1836 Capped Liberty
    dime. My oldest US
    detecting find so far.
    I dig almost every
    signal I get for the most
    part. Go figure...
  • laurentyvanlaurentyvan Posts: 4,243 ✭✭✭
    Dentuck- nice post!

    Interesting numismatic lore, always a revelation to a lot of us!image
    One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
    is that you end up being governed by inferiors. – Plato
  • SYRACUSIANSYRACUSIAN Posts: 6,461 ✭✭✭✭
    Yep, the gazette is a dream coin for the advanced Ionian collector too, even the ones in catalogues are drawn, although I happen to know a happy owner of one of these rarest crude beasts. image
    Dimitri



    myEbay



    DPOTD 3
  • broginebrogine Posts: 89 ✭
    I hope I won't be considered rude, contradicting an expert like Mr. Bressett, but etymology is not his primary field after all. ...

    pin money
    buck
    gazette
  • TegTeg Posts: 135


    << <i>I hope I won't be considered rude, contradicting an expert like Mr. Bressett, but etymology is not his primary field after all. ...

    pin money
    buck
    gazette >>



    Hi,
    Your links ask me for a S.F. Library card!
    I 'spend a penny' on your links!
    This has always and only meant one thing.

    Thanks
    I.P. Freely
  • broginebrogine Posts: 89 ✭
    Sorry ... it worked in my trial run. Here are cut-and-pasted excerpts from the Oxford English Dictionary:

    PIN MONEY
    [< PIN n.1 (cf. PIN n.1 7, and quots. 1542 at sense 1, 1640 at sense 1) + MONEY n.. Cf. French{dag}épingles (plural) gift given to a woman on completion of a business transaction with her husband (15th cent. in Middle French), money given to a woman in recognition of some service she has rendered (1640), spec. use of épingle pin: see EPINGLETTE n.]

    1. A (usually annual) sum allotted to a woman for clothing and other personal expenses; esp. such an allowance provided for a wife's private expenditure. Now hist.
    [1542 Test. Eboracensia (1902) VI. 160, I give my said doughter Margarett my lease of the parsonadge of Kirkdall Churche..to by her pynnes withal. 1640 EARL OF CORK in Lismore Papers (1886) 1st Ser. V. 160 Which Rent I haue bestowed on my daughter Mary to buy her pins.]

    BUCK
    [Origin obscure.]

    A dollar.
    1856 Dem. State Jrnl. (Sacramento) 3 July 3/2 Bernard, assault and battery upon Wm. Croft, mulcted in the sum of twenty bucks. 1896 ADE Artie xii. 106 Jimmy can afford to buy wine at four bucks a throw when he's only getting three a week out o' the job. 1921 Blackw. Mag. Aug. 264/2, I wonder if I've done right forking out five bucks.

    GAZETTE
    [a. F. gazette, ad. It. gazzetta, pl. gazzette (whence the earliest forms in English), app. so called from the coin of that name (see GAZET), which may have been the sum paid either for the paper itself or for the privilege of reading it; but a derivation from gazzetta, dim. of gazza magpie, is not impossible.
    In late 17th and early 18th c., the word came to be accented on the first syllable, and it is so marked by Johnson. Cowper (Table Talk 37) again accents it in the original fashion.]

    Again, no 'gotcha' intended. These stories about words - how many of us swear that we know where 'okay' or 'jazz' comes from - get started like rumors, and spread in what I think is called a cascade. There are probably a number of widely-held misconceptions about coins and their history. Collect 'em all!
  • TegTeg Posts: 135
    Hi brogine,
    I know that you are not trying for a 'gotcha'.
    However, given that the guy has made some basic errors, I think
    that you should read his explanations as colorful renditions,
    rather than rely on them as history.

    Teg
  • DentuckDentuck Posts: 3,819 ✭✭✭
    Errors?

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