Mark Fryer: Money talks

What do you call that stuff in your pockets?

No, not the credit card receipts, scrunched up tissues and failed Lotto tickets. The folding stuff with the bird pictures.

Money? Sure, but what do you actually call it?

You might call it just that - money - but you might also call it "dosh", "brass", "moolah" or any of the many other words we use for the stuff with which we pay our way in the world.

Many, many words. According to Barclays Bank in the UK, the world's English speakers employ over 200 words as more colourful substitutes for the prosaic "money".

In one of those exercises that large companies carry out in order to get their names mentioned in the media, Barclays recently polled 1000 Britons seeking the answer to the momentous question: what do you call your cash?

And the winner was ... "dosh". A word "of unknown origin" according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, although Barclays theorises that it might be a hybrid of "dollar" and "cash" or, alternatively, might have something to do with "doss", as in bedding down for the night - presumably because if you wanted to doss in any degree of comfort, you first needed some dosh.

Dosh - now thoroughly at home in New Zealand - came from the US, says Barclays, and didn't appear in Britain until after World War II, well after it had vanished from its original home.

When they're not calling it dosh, the other top 10 words Britons use for their money are, in order of popularity: dough, readies, brass, bread, wad, lolly, wedge, wonga and moolah.

Some of those terms have been around for centuries; we've been calling our cash "brass" for near on 500 years, first meaning just bronze or copper coins, then money of all types.

Other ancient slang hasn't lasted the distance. These days you're not likely to be asked for a "rhino" (17th century, origins obscure) or an "oof" (19th century, from a German expression used by Jewish immigrants in London).

Some money words go back even further, as in the case of "quid", meaning a pound.

Some sources theorise that it might have originated with the Latin phrase "quid pro quo", meaning something given in exchange for something else.

Barclays points out simply that "quid" is Latin for "what". How that became associated with money is not apparent, unless it was what cheapskate Romans habitually replied when told it was their turn to pay for a round.

Other derivations are blindingly obvious. "Chinker", a 17th century term for a coin, could only come from the sound they make in your pocket.

The more current "pinger" has the same overtones.

Ditto "smackers", from the act of smacking your money down on the counter.

Every decade makes its own contribution. In the 1900s "mazuma" (yiddish) was all the rage, the 1910s contributed "scratch", and by the 1920s the real swingers were talking about "lettuce".

The word "bread" may be associated with 1960s hippiedom but it was popular in the 1930s, "lolly" was hip in the 1940s and by the 1950s a lot of money was "a bomb".

The letter K, as an abbreviation for 1000 of some currency, goes back at least as far as the 1960s.

By the 1970s "wedge" was all the go among trendy Britons, then it was "wonga" in the 1980s and in the 1990s "Rogan Josh" (because it rhymes with dosh, of course).

Given that there's an awful lot of money in the United States, it's not surprising that many of the words we use for money had their origins in the land of the dollar bill.

There's "buck", which has become accepted slang for currencies in many parts of the world.

Author Bill Bryson reckons that it comes from the use of buckskins as a medium of exchange in the middle of the 19th century.

Other sources scorn the skin theory, claiming that the buck was originally the (buckhorn-handled) knife which was plunged into the table beside whoever was dealing in a card game (hence "pass the buck", as the dealer's job moved around the table). As things got more civilised, a silver dollar replaced the knife as a marker, but the buck stuck.

Then there's "dollar" - which goes back to well before the states were united, coming from 16th century Bohemia - and "half a dollar", which from mid-19th century Britain meant two shillings and sixpence, presumably because a US dollar was then worth about five shillings.

Another US import is the exuberant "spondulik", which appeared in college slang around 1860. One theory claims it has something to do with the ancient Greek "spondulikos", meaning a type of shell which could have been used as an early form of money.

"I'm haemorrhaging sponduliks" complains Tony Soprano in one episode of The Sopranos, proving that great words never die.

Mix money and rhyming slang and you get East Endisms such as "Arthur Ashe" (cash), "whistle and toot" (loot), "Lady Godiva" (fiver), "Ayrton Senna" (tenner) and "bag of sand" (grand, or £1000).

Pop culture plays its part too. Barclays reckons that, in some social circles, they'll know that if you ask for a "Placido" you want £10 (because Placido Domingo is a tenor, geddit?). Then there's something called a "Hawaii" (£50, because of the TV show Hawaii 5-0).

A whole menagerie of animals has also been used as synonyms for money. A "pony" is £25, for no reason that anyone seems to be able to remember, a "monkey" is £500 and £1000 is a "cow", or a "gorilla", because it's a very big monkey, of course.

In Canada the one dollar coin is a "loonie", ostensibly because it bears a picture of a loon - a large waterbird - although one can't help suspecting the nickname also conveys a certain lack of respect for the national currency. Inevitably, the two dollar coin is a "toonie".

What about New Zealandisms? The good old "razoo" looks promising, but the Australians have done a pavlova and claimed that one too.

And, no, there doesn't seem to have been a coin called a razoo, brass or otherwise, although Australia's Macquarie Dictionary may have an explanation when it notes that at one time "razoo" meant to ridicule in US slang.

The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English shoots down another possible derivation when it observes that any connection between "razoo" and the Maori word "raho", meaning testicle, is "most unlikely". Quite.

But we can at least claim "plastic fantastic", which started life as a description of the fibreglass boat New Zealand fielded in the 1986-87 America's Cup, before finding a home as slang for a credit card.

But in the end you can call it whatever you like - it's whether you've got it that really matters.

* To contact Personal Finance Editor Mark Fryer write to: Weekend Herald, PO Box 32, Auckland.

Email: mark_fryer@nzherald.co.nz

Ph: (09) 373-6400 ext 8833. Fax: (09) 373-6423.