What does the word money mean?
Why money is called "cabbage" and other strange names
The word "cabbage" in the designation "money" was born within the thieves' jargon. It contained the words "forks", "filki" meaning "money". Taking into account the presence in ordinary language of the phrase "cabbage forks" (ie, head of cabbage), as well as the distant similarity of such a fork with a bundle of banknotes (especially on the cut), one can understand the origin of this term. In addition, green cabbage - like the old "triplets" and today's dollars.
A huge semantic nest is associated with the word "money", perhaps the largest in the language of ANY developed nation.
For a person who earns his living by his labor, money is money: hryvnia, rubles, kopecks. Occasionally he can call them "tugriks" or use some other name, like the strange "titi-miti".
However, many names and related concepts are associated with the word "money". Attention is drawn to a large number of terms denoting money and actions with them in the criminal world.
As soon as money is not called in thieves' jargon: grandmother, bucks, balabans, bashli, air, pelt, yeast, proteins, toads, signs, cabbage, lave, milk, oats, okhcha, bullets, adobe, sarmak, straw, plywood, fug , havras, crunches, numbers, tsutsa, celandine, husks, bumblebees. And titi-miti - from the same dictionary. However, this list is most likely incomplete.
Such an abundance of names for money in the thieves' world speaks of the meaning that money is attached to it, even if it is declared otherwise. Please note that many names have an emphatically dismissive connotation - toads, straw, husks. But why so many different names? You can't hide anything from your tongue!
Etymology, the science that studies the origin of words, is not an exact science. Even about the very word "money" one can find the most contradictory opinions. Some researchers believe that the words for money, customs and treasury are of Mongolian origin. Old Russian "cattle" meant "money". Others believe that it is based on onomatopoeia - "zen". Indeed, there was a long period in the history of monetary circulation when money was only metallic, at first silver. They "zenkali" very euphoniously - they rang on monists, in purses and knapsacks.
There are several opinions about the word "grandmother". There is an idea that this name owes its origin to the Empress Catherine the Great. The fact is that her portrait was printed on paper money of that time. This is an interesting hypothesis, but hardly correct. Linguists call this type of history false (or folk) etymology.
Drive "lave" by concepts, in kind!
Vsevolod Krestovsky in "Petersburg Slums" gives the following facts that explain the etymology of the word "grandmother". In the secret language of the underworld of St. Petersburg, the word "grandma" (and also "litter") means money.
At first, the word had a singular number, while today "grandmother" is used only in the plural. Criminal argo borrowed it from Russian dialects! In peasant life, "babka" (also "baba") was the name given to several sheaves on the stubble (from 10 to 13) put together one to another, one of which was placed on top of this "pyramid". From a distance, such a "structure" really resembled a Russian woman in a sarafan. The harvest was often considered "grandmothers": "How many grandmothers did you take?" Then I meant - from the field. Now rather - "from this sucker."
Thus, a completely labor word has penetrated into the thieves' jargon, and now it is already returning back, having passed from the criminal argot into the everyday vernacular language, in which it is numbered in modern dictionaries.
Lave, lavieux, lavashki and even lavender are borrowings from the Gypsy language.
Bucks, bucks, greens, greens, mani- this is already from the English language, with the meaning of "dollars". Hence the humorous, but quite weighty name "a ton of bucks" - one thousand dollars.
And as soon as they do not call the euro! And Erica, and Eureka, and Eureka. Although, in fact, the Eurasian is a Kamchatka or Chukchi long-tailed gopher.
It must be admitted that the criminal argot now has a great influence on the language of the business world. Unfortunately, for most businessmen in general, and ours in particular, money is the center of the universe. They can be exchanged, that is, "smash", "split", "scatter", "soak". Commercial relations have spawned other words among new businessmen. A good (money) buyer is characterized by the following epithets - specific, cool, heavy. The bad one (greedy and picky, according to their concepts) is called a dead tree, a horse in a coat, a bouncy ... Money is not paid - it is unfastened. The expressions "cash settlement", "non-cash settlement" received, although convenient - abbreviated, but dissonant names: cash, bank transfer.
Here is how beautifully the essayist and poet Vladimir Ermakov writes about the reflection of the mentality of the nation in the language and its influence on reality:
“The self-confident Mr. Dollar, having got into our Zone and received klikuhu bucks, loses its respectability and begins to behave in unpredictable ways. A lemon in a copier box is not at all the same as a million dollars in a bank….
Our "business" is always "with money" ...
Our national idea is still incompatible with the concept of "sacred property", which is the legal and moral guarantor of capitalism. The literal translation of the concept “businessman” - “business man”, which is key for the capitalist economy, in our speech practice has a clear ironic connotation and is burdened with negative associations: in the classical phenome, so influential in our society, “business” means the same as “thug” ... And one more hint is given to us by the language. There is such an expression "to be with the money." Whether we want to recognize it as important or not, the state of a person with money gives out a persistent intuitive idea that capital enslaves a person. The owner is a slave of things in their universal and absolutely abstracted form - money. Wealth dries up the soul. What a man! - even Tsar Kashchei "languishes over gold" ...
As they say, neither subtract nor add. So the language reflects the attitude of the people to the phenomena of social life.
The English say: "The Better the Man, The Better his Money" - the better a man, the better his money. And here you can still hear: "The more money, the less a person" ... This is the difference in the mentality of nations, reflected in languages.
Of course, language is a very inertial system. Changes in it take decades. But as the state of the banknotes shows where the financial system is heading, so by the language - in which direction the society is developing. If you are constantly paying with old, shabby bills, then the economy is all right, and if you come across a lot of "crunches" - new banknotes - it means that the printing press is working to its fullest. Expect inflation. So it is in the language. If the people around you are increasingly using criminal words, do not expect a state governed by the rule of law tomorrow.
However, ultimately, money is not the main thing in this world. There are many more completely different words in any language. Money can't buy life either. But death is possible. Let's remember what the American writer Edgar Watson Howe said: "When a person says that money can do everything, know that he does not have it, and never had it."
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The psychology of wealth is based on the psychological recognition of the abundance of the world and one's own right to receive its share. These two simple things are beyond the reach of the vast majority of people who sincerely believe that they are not good enough to receive as much money as they need to be happy. Therefore, the problem deepens and deepens by
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In the old days in Russia there was a special social caste of the people. These people not only entertained ordinary people at fairs and big holidays, but also had their own secret language. The first substitute words came from them. Subsequently, foreign words and prison jargon came to the spoken language. At the same time, the word "grandmother" is surprisingly related both to monarchs and to ordinary inhabitants of Russian cities and villages. The fact is that the one hundred ruble note, which was especially popular in pre-revolutionary Russia, depicted Catherine II at a fairly old age. At the same time, most of the financial transactions, from doing business to accumulating money "in stocking", were carried out using this particular banknote. At the same time, all the representatives of the ruling dynasty of the Romanovs, which changed a lot during the 19th - early 20th centuries, were, to one degree or another, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Catherine II. In particular, Alexander I, during his official speeches, referred to his royal grandmother. This fact was quickly noticed by the population of the country and the banknote of one hundred rubles was called the "royal grandmother". However, it was long and inconvenient to say two words. Therefore, at first one hundred rubles turned into just a grandmother, and then all paper banknotes were called “grandmothers”.
The experience of philological and bonistic research
This is not the "grandmother" herself, this is her descendant of the 1961 model
The word "grandmother" in relation to money has firmly entered the Russian spoken language in the 1990s. So many theories do not exist regarding the origin of this word.
There is an idea that this word came from an accounting argo. The knuckles in the accounts are called “dummies” from the bone beef “knuckles”. Remember the game of grandmothers or piles, where the game uses exactly “grandmothers”, ie bones near the hooves.
These bones are very dense, do not have a spongy structure, and therefore are often used and are used for handicrafts, including the manufacture of knuckles for accounts.
It is from these "grandmothers", they say, that the grassroots name of money has gone.
There are other theories of varying degrees of plausibility, and sometimes even fantastic.
Up to what I said yesterday (the author, however, immediately called it “self-made”): ““ Babka ”is a hub at a wheel in a cart in some Russian regional dialects. From here, I conjecture, "grandmothers" are something without which you can't get anywhere and nothing will budge. ”
Meanwhile, the etymology of the "grandmothers" is very simple. This is the case when you just need to know. Moreover, this is the case that is a vivid example of how impossible it is to reconstruct reality without its written fixation. One can only "give birth" to more or less plausible explanations.
It’s like it’s impossible to accurately determine the nationality of a particular archaeological culture without written sources. All these ideas of Acad. B.A. Rybakov, to tie the same Trypillian culture to the Slavs, are inexorably broken by the absence of any narrative sources, turning all the archeologist's ingenious constructions into fortune-telling and indefinite.
The same is with etymology. It is often simply impossible to reconstruct the origin of a particular word. You just need to know, just know.
So, back to the “grandmas”.
The naming of money "grandmothers" comes from the thieves' name of a specific Russian pre-revolutionary banknote.
In Russian life, it was customary to name bank notes of different denominations. Let us recall the "red" one of N.V. Gogol in Dead Souls.
The “color” names of Russian paper money were originally associated with the fact that bank notes of different denominations were printed on paper of different colors.
"Red" is 10 rubles
"Blue" - 5 rubles.
“Yellowy” - 25 rubles.
Note that if the signature of the book. Khovansky was facsimile, the signature of the Assignation Bank cashier was real, as can be seen from this bill, where the signature went right through.
But 50 rubles were called "corner". Why? I don't know ... There is one version. The denomination was in use when “greasing”. They say that the bribe-giver showed the bribe-taker a corner of the bill, but I'm afraid that this is a “legend”.
Speaking about the “colored” names of banknotes, it should be said that these names were so ingrained that when in 1830 the 10-ruble note changed color, it continued to be called “red”
Later, in 1840, the colors of the banknotes returned to what they were before 1830 and did not change until 1991.
The banknote of interest to us, the one that gave the grassroots, colloquial, name to money, appeared in 1841 (the highest manifesto of July 18, 1841).
This is the so-called "little white" - 100 rubles.
For more than half a century until 1895, it was the largest Russian banknote.
In 1866, a new series of Russian paper money came out. Portraits of royalty appeared there for the first time.
Dmitry Donskoy was at the five-ruble bill. On the "red" - Mikhail Fedorovich.
On the "little white" was a portrait of Catherine II.
On the reverse side, the "little white" turned out to be by no means "white", but multi-colored ...
Since that time, "little white" was also called "katenka".
The bill turned out to be very convenient, especially for large payments and, as they say now, interbank transfers.
Actually, Catherine II got this banknote by accident. There should have been Peter I, but something “didn't grow together”
Peter the Great, on the other hand, settled on another "bank" note - 50 rubles, a "corner".
However, 50 rubles with Peter I came out only in 1866 and was gradually withdrawn from circulation.
I specifically focus on Peter I. Who knows, if he were on the hundred ruble note, and now in everyday life we would call money differently.
So that's it. Bank notes of 100 rubles rarely found their way into ordinary circulation. An ordinary person - an official, headquarters or chief officer, could not hold them in his hands all his life.
This bill was a bill of large mutual settlements, as well as a bill of accumulation. It was usually kept in jars, and more often in safes.
So in the environment of “specialists in fireproof cabinets”, among the thieves-bugbears, this banknote was called at the beginning “ tsar's grandmother", And then, according to the law of linguistic economy, simply" grandmother”.
The 100-ruble bill existed until 1895 without changing the design.
At the same time, there was a time when Catherine II was the only monarch in Russian money, which made the bill even more prominent.
In 1898, a new, regular, series of Russian money appeared.
Monarchs reappeared. At the same time, the portraits of monarchs moved from the reverse side to the front.
A portrait of Nicholas I.
This bill did not receive a special name.
The new design of the “katenka” looked like this:
The most interesting thing is that they stubbornly continued to call her "little white".
A new denomination has appeared. 500 rubles. Peter I appeared there again.
This banknote also did not receive any special name. First of all, because very rarely it appeared in the usual circulation. But among the "bugbears" they began to call her " grandfather”. Here, I think, the law of analogy worked. Once weaving - grandmother, grandma, then 500 rubles, and even with Peter the Great - grandfather.
I don’t think that if Peter I, as originally planned, got into the hundred ruble note, this banknote would be called “grandfather”, but we would call money “grandfathers”, grandfathers ”or“ grandfathers ”. I suppose money would have a different common name.
Well, and lastly, what we used to call "katenki" appeared only in 1905.
"Katenka" of the 1905 series. By the way, she became "white" again, or rather, slightly yellowish.
If the portrait “ dibs"Has not changed since 1866, then the portrait" grandfathers”Changed again:
By the way, “grandfather” was for a long time the most secure banknote in the world. In total, he had 46 degrees of protection. The most successful counterfeiters, who were able to steal paper for five hundred rubles in the Expedition of Procurement of State Papers, bypassed only 43 degrees of protection.
And further. On the question of Russian money. After 1866, banknotes were in circulation regardless of the year of issue of the banknote. There were no “denominations” and “trimming of zeros”.
Here's a story about the word "grandmother" ...
