Some Call it Money

Abstract

THE PRINTED RECORDS for even the commonest nonce words are not easy to locate. The difficulty is not that they do not get into print frequently, but that the attention lags, unless we set out to make a specific capture. The notation of any word-genre which depends upon desultory annotation is likely to be haphazard. Nevertheless, even fitful recognitions will accumulate eventually to a partial collection of substitutes for' a normal and traditional word. We all are aware that money has many names. A dozen popular terms will come to mind \vithout effort. Such words persist often for a long time; others live but briefly. Fashions change, and words, like men, have their day. For example, rhino, of unknown English origin, noted in 1688, continued in America at least until 1843. (See Robert Carlton, The New Purchase, N. Y., 1843, I I, 175: High learning became as popular as common schools ... It brought the rhino!). The word seems to have no record in this century. The following list of substitutes for money has grown from a sporadic reading-list, which is made up particularly from books which appeared in the last five years. Their character is decidedly popular, because the volumes were chosen deliberately as likely sources for the kind of language which,' otherwise, might not find its way into print. Even so, the laggard eye missed, no doubt, many illustrations of substitute terms, particularly, since its search had been directed to other kinds of phraseology, as well. A few words have no recent annotation, not because they have no record, but because the compiler has only heard them and has not noted their specific appearance. The contribution's value lies in its partial record of slang expressions in use during the last half dozen years. 1 Alfalfa. See Hay. Noted orally within the last decade. Alnperes. John O'Hara, Hope of Heaven, Bantam Books, N. Y., 1956. (Original edition, Harcourt Brace, N. Y., 1938), p. 13.