Café Discovery: money

Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, ladies and gentleman, from 1953.  This was their first hit.  You may be more familiar with the cover versions by either Eddie Cochran (1959) or what’s his name…Elvis Presley (1956).

Life once again is dominated by, as Terry Pratchett called it, the “reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits”, aka echo-gnomics.  It always distresses me when life becomes all about the money.  But I live here and I live now.  And there is next to no market in the political arena for knowledge, justice, stewardship of the planet and other things that would interest me more.  Or any.  

Money-grubbing sucks.  Accumulation of money sucks the joy out of life.  But that’s just my opinion.

Eymology Online is my friend, but don’t blame them for my rewrites.

money

The word money dates back to around 1290, with its meaning at the time restricted to “coinage, metal currency.”  It arrived in English from the Old French moneie,  which itself derived from the Latin moneta “mint, coinage,” from Moneta, a title of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined.  Perhaps this derived from monere “advise, warn” (see monitor), with the sense of “admonishing goddess,” which is sensible, but the etymology is difficult. It was extended to include paper money in the early 19th century.

Use of the phrase to make money, meaning “earn pay” is first attested to  1457.  The traditional highwayman’s threat your money or your life is first attested to 1841.  The phrase in the money (which appeared in 1902) originally meant “one who finishes among the prize-winners” (as in a horse race). The challenge to put (one’s) money where (one’s) mouth is was first recorded in 1942.  Moneybags, meaning “rich person”, is from 1818.  A  money-grub, “one who is sordidly intent on amassing money,” is from 1768.

I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is the symbol.

–Henry Ford

currency

This word dates from 1657, meaning at the time “condition of flowing.”  It derives from the Latin currentum, the past participle of currere, “to run” (see current).  The sense of a flow or course was extended in 1699 (by John Locke) to “circulation of money.”

Ooooh!  Locke:

From wikipedia:

Labor creates property, but it also does contain limits to its accumulation: man’s capacity to produce and man’s capacity to consume. According to Locke, unused property is waste and an offense against nature. However, with the introduction of “durable” goods, men could exchange their excessive perishable goods for goods that would last longer and thus not offend the natural law. The introduction of money marks the culmination of this process. Money makes possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing waste through spoilage. … Locke anchors property in labor but in the end upholds the unlimited accumulation of wealth.

And thus we had people like Henry Ford and the Robber Barons that came before him.  It’s just my humble opinion that the phrase “robber baron” needs to be resurrected once again:

Robber baron is a term revived in the 19th century in the United States as a pejorative reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy.

—wikipedia

While “researching” this piece (which consists of following my instincts, copying, pasting, and maybe doing a rewrite…in other words, sitting on the doorstep of plagiarism, but giving credit liberally), I tripped over a site with slang terms for money.  As a public service, I provide those here, in case anyone suffers a deficiency:

dough (counterfeit money was “sourdough”), moolah, rhino, spondulix, greenbacks, bucks, pony (rhyming slanged into macaroni), monkey, C-note, grand, note, bar, smacker, bacon, bread, cabbage, lettuce, kale, folding green, long green, jack, scratch, clams, simoleons…

Finally, since we had Locke, Orson Scott Card demands that Demosthenes be given equal time:

“We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done.”

—Demosthenes (First Olynthiac, 20) – The orator took great pains to convince his countrymen that the reform of the theoric fund was necessary to finance the city’s military preparations.

I’m left with bewilderment over how the world came to be such a place.