by Kevin Burton
Some of the words we use to discuss finances didn’t start as money words, as we learned Wednesday, from a list from Merriam-Webster dictionary.
We continue the theme today with a colorful phrase from the world of poker:
Blue-chip
Blue-chip, meaning “a stock issue of high investment quality that usually pertains to a substantial, well-established company,” was first noted in the late 19th century. From this meaning extended senses developed, such that blue chip applies to a consistently successful and profitable venture or enterprise, an outstandingly worthwhile and valuable property or asset, and an athlete rated as excellent or as an excellent prospect.
The term as applied to the stock market derives from the actual use of blue chips in another type of game of stakes—poker.
If times are good and the market flourishing, the game may be played with ‘blue chips,’ as a gambler would say, the very high-priced stocks being the favorites.
Blue chips in poker have the highest value, with red and white chips as lower denominations.
Invest
Invest was tailored from the Latin verb investire, meaning “to clothe,” in the 16th century, and it was originally used with the same meaning as its Latin source.
The verb also sports the specific meanings of “to clothe in the symbols of office or honor” and “to install in an office or honor with customary ceremonies.”
The financial meaning of the word also descends from Latin, but it entered English via Italian in the early 17th century. In Italian, investire developed a special sense fabricated from the notion of “clothing” money in a new form. That use was attached to the English word invest, which eventually came to refer to a commitment of money to earn a return. This financial sense of invest is attested in the early 1600s in connection with trading by the East India Company.
Fine
The word fine comes from Anglo-French fin and Latin finis, both of which mean “end” or “boundary,” and in its earliest uses in English, fine referred to various ends, limits, and boundaries.
The modern-day financial meaning of the word actually dates to the 15th century and refers to a sum imposed as punishment for an offense. Up until the 19th century, however, fine was also used for a sum paid as compensation or for exemption from punishment—in other words, money paid to avoid punishment or imprisonment. A common expression was to make fine, which referred to the exemption from punishment or the release from captivity by paying a sum of money.
The word finance also emerged in the 15th century but from Anglo-French finer, meaning “to end” as well as “to pay,” and similarly in English referred to an end or payment. In the 18th century, the word came to refer to pecuniary resources and the management of funds.
Income
When the noun income entered English in the 14th century, it wasn’t a grand entrance: it was in the sense of “coming in.”
Later senses of income refer to a person or thing that literally or figuratively comes in, such as an immigrant or a divine influence into the soul, but those senses are now obsolete.
It wasn’t until the 17th century that income showed real value by becoming a word referring to money that is made through business or labor. But everything has its price: at the close of the 18th century, people in Great Britain were being taxed on the money referred to as income, and the United States government introduced a permanent income tax in the early 20th century.
Fund
The noun fund was established in English in the late 17th century. The foundation of the word is both French and Latin. The French base is the word fond, meaning “bottom,” “stock or capital,” or “piece of landed property”; the Latin base is fundus, meaning “bottom” or “piece of landed property.” Apparently, English speakers were fond of the French fond since they used it as a variant of fund up until the late 19th century.
Initially, fund was used as a word for “bottom,” both literally, as in “the fund of a bottle,” and figuratively, “the fund of the soul.” Then, borrowing on a sense of its French root, the word was used for a supply or stock of material things, like “a fund of brandy” or “a fund of timber,” as well as immaterial things:
It was around the end of the 17th century that fund began accumulating lexical stock as a word for a sum of money for the carrying on of a business or enterprise, for the support and maintenance of an institution, and for the support of a family and individual. The word was employed in its plural form in the early 18th century to refer to available money at one’s disposal.
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