Conference thebay::joyoflex

    This one really belongs in the etymology note, but I'll respond to it
    here.
    
    Roman soldiers were paid in salt; salt was a valuable and necessary
    commodity, especially on forced marches. Hence `salary'. Also `worth
    one's salt'.
    
    `Dough' is also comestible; the spanish have a similar slang word
    for money - `pasta'. We earn `an honest crust' or `our daily bread',
    or we `bring home the bacon'. So I shouldn't be surprised if some
    of the other money terms related to food as well.
    
    b

    and depending on for whom one works,   :-}
    
    
    breadcrumbs
    
    djw
    
    

    Peanuts.

	In French we have l'argent, les sous,

	and also in slang le fric, le pognon, l'oseille, le p�ze, 
	le flouze, la monnaie, les ronds, les picaillons, la braise;

	la galette, or le grisbi (when there's a lot of it)

	la mitraille    (now that's pocket money)


	Slang units:

		Un balle = 1 franc
		Une brique = un b�ton = 10,000 francs.


	roger	

    And you can eat galettes too.
    
    Dunno whether you can eat any of the others.
    
    b

    
    >	la galette, or le grisbi (when there's a lot of it)

 
    Isn't "une galette" a biscuit ?  Or am I getting confused ?
    (It's a long time since I bought any bikkies in France !)
    
    Ian
    

	La galette is a kind of biscuit indeed, and a buck-wheat
	pancake in Brittany (ah, les galettes bretonnes).
	It derives from "galet", which is a round, flat stone, as can
	be found on many beaches; looks a bit like a coin.
	According to Bloch-Wartburg (excellent dictionary of French etymology)
	galet comes from "gal", old French for stone; from Gallic "gallos" and
	possibly Gaelic "gall", same meaning.

	L'oseille (sorrel) can be eaten as well. According to Harraps,
	it means money in English too.

	Then I should also mention le bl�, l'artiche, and la fra�che.

	Le grisbi was a popular word a few decades ago. In the fifties,
	a famous film with Jean Gabin as a Parisian gangster was titled 
	"Touchez pas au grisbi !". 
	I'm almost sure that "grisbi" is a deformation of an English or 
	American word, but I can't retrieve which one. Any idea ?

	roger

    I'm not sure what Harraps means here [give me Le Petit Robert any day]:
    
    �	L'oseille (sorrel) can be eaten as well. According to Harraps,
    �	it means money in English too.
    
    I've never met `l'oseille' [or `sorrel'] with this meaning.  But
    I've heard `lettuce' and `green stuff' meaning money. (I wonder
    how long that expression will last, now that we have no �1 note
    - green.  I wonder if the expression will last longer in Scotland
    - where they still have such notes.)
    
    b

.10�< Note 658.10 by MARVIN::KNOWLES "Running old protocol" >
.10�                                -< green stuff >-
.10�
.10�    how long that expression will last, now that we have no �1 note
.10�    - green.  I wonder if the expression will last longer in Scotland
.10�    - where they still have such notes.)

    And I wonder how much longer we will still have such notes.  There
    are three Scottish banks which issue their own notes, the Bank Of
    Scotland, The Royal Bank and the Clydesdale Bank.  In a short while
    only the Royal Bank will still print pound notes, but the reasons
    given by the other two for stopping are interesting.  The Clydesdale
    decided that the notes were wearing out too quickly, and they were
    too expensive to keep making.  The Bank of Scotland, on the other
    hand, is changing from pound notes to pound coins because, no jest,
    the pound coins are so unpopular that it is costing too much
    to store them.  Any pound coins put out by the bank are just returned.
    It seems pound notes are a victim of their own success.
    
    [Exit stage left]

    re. 10

>    I've never met `l'oseille' [or `sorrel'] with this meaning.  But

     You're right on this, Bob, of course. I read Harrap's too fast
     and got confused when seeing "oseille" translated to "money, dough
     oof, lolly"; which doesn't mean that "sorrel" has the same meaning.

     roger 

    Another edible one: the other night on TV I heard `clams' used to mean 
    dollars.
    
    b

Bananas, too.  Remember the guy on TV who advertised a car for sale as
so many bananas?  I heard that someone took him literally and actually
brought several thousand bananas to the car dealership and ended up
getting the car.  Of course, that story may be apocryphal.

Dave C.

    Good thing, too. What would the guy have done with all the banananas?
    (For that matter, what did the car dealer do with them?)
    
    If the car dealer was clever, he could turn the car-for-bananas sale
    into a very good advert.