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Five grand would be five thousand dollars.
How did grand come to be a monetary designation?
And:
Do we have any comparable words for a hundred thousand, a million, and higher?
Since we're iced in here at the farm, we're watching a gangster movie and one of the gangsters was talking about the number of grands they owed another gangster.
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I'm curious, too. I think the G in "grand" comes from the G in, giga, maybe? I'm sure one of the scholars here will fill us in. Meanwhile, I'm glad you haven't lost power. I complain about the snow here, but ice storms are much, much worse...
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I don't know about comparable words for higher values, but if you go lower, you get 'a pony' meaning £25- and 'a ton' meaning £100- (or 100mph as in 'doing over the ton')
Also, my Collins dictionary suggests that grand comes from the Latin 'grandis' and dates back to the C16.
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Any minute now...the lights are beginning to flicker...we'll be without power, but do have a generator.
I checked AHD and MW online, but only read about grand as a slang term and saw nothing about etymology.
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from the G in, giga
Since giga means billion and a grand isn't even a million pennies (100,000, to be precise) I wouldn't think so. I think it dates back to a time when $1000 was a grand amount of money.
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OK. And what does the K come from to mean thousand? kilo?
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"I think it dates back to a time when $1000 was a grand amount of money."
I've also heard the word "large" used in this context, as in "I'm into him for ten large." I wonder which came first.
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K = kilo
Yup
Interesting (to me) sidenote. I don't know if I've mentioned this previously, here it is again anyway.
Most people probably know that K=1024 (and not 1000) to computerists.
1 Kilobyte = 1 KB = 1024 Bytes
1 Megabyte = 1 MB = 1024*1024 Bytes
1 Gigabyte = 1 GB = 1024*1024*1024 Bytes
However, among communications engineers (many of whom are probably also computer programmers), K equals 1000 again. 1 Kb/s = one kilobit per second,
which can lead to a bit of, ahem, miscommunication at times. I didn't actually catch onto this for a long time until I finally took a formal class in networking (from a pretty well-known guy in the field, and this fact was in his class notes). I missed a lot of stuff when I studied this on my own, and had done a lot more reading. I really should have taken the class sooner. Since I figured this out, I've seen several books get it wrong (assuming my prof's notes were correct - what can I say? I trust him).
k
----
Note the small b is for bit and the big B is for byte
Years ago there wasn't a clear standard for what word size was, so a DEC 10 (a 36 bit computer), one could actually define one's byte sizes. And a PDP-8 (also manufactured by DEC and for a long time the most popular mini-computer in the world) had 12 bit words.
1 Byte = 8b
1/2 Word = 2B = 16b
1 Full Word = 4B = 32b
1 Double Word = 8B = 64b
There was also a term for 4 bits, but I haven't heard it used for at least a decade. Does anyone know or care to guess what that term is?
k
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care to guess what that term is?
I know so I ain' guessing.
Don' nobody peek...
nybble (Spellings may vary; check local geeks)
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"There was also a term for 4 bits, but I haven't heard it used for at least a decade. Does anyone know or care to guess what that term is?"
Fifty cents?
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Fifty cents?
Reminds me of the old Computer Science Club football cheer: Not that we ever went to any football games
Shift to the left!
Shift to the right!
Pop up!
Push down!
Byte! Byte! Byte!
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"Don' nobody peek..."
Heya, that's it! though I don't recall having seen it spelt that way. BF's answer is also correct. I'm not sure why the term went by the wayside, unless it's that current hardware makes it unnecessary to think about nibbles. (There are still semiconductor components that use a 4 bit bus, though ... it's possible the still use the term there.)
Next question - one to which I do not know the answer. Is there a generic term for a 'digit,' regardless of base? For example, bit's are "binary units" or "binary digits" depending on whom you ask. 10011 has 5 bits. 1066 has 4 digits. The hex number "FA3C" has 4 "hexadecimal digits" we always called them (a nibble is represented by one hexadecimal digit). But is there another term? I'm thinking 'digit' refers to base 10, although one could make an argument that 'digit' includes any integer base, though. After all the word digital (in opposition to analogue) refers to any descrete units (as opposed to continuous).
But back to the origin of this usage of grand. I found someplace on the web that referred to a grand as "one thousand pounds sterling." Does that usage precede the US usage?
k
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I've always regarded the 4-bit/nibble thang as an anachronism best relegated to history books. The original Intel chip (the 4004) that was the basis for the 8-bit chip (the 8086/8088) which powered the first PCs was a 4-bit wonder developed for calculators. Last I done heard of 4 bit architecture!
- Pfranz
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"Large" is a criminal underworld term for $10,000, if I understood correctly the use of the word in "Rounders", a really excellent movie about very high stakes poker players. (Warning about the movie, there IS a lot of profanity and a good deal of violence.)
TEd
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So, if you were into him for ten large, that would be a hundred grand--and that is a large amount to be into someone for.
But "large" doesn't have an appealing ring to it so used.
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"large" doesn't have an appealing ring
Certainly not when you're into him for it.
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Pooh-Bah
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found someplace on the web that referred to a grand as "one thousand pounds sterling."
It certainly did - and does - mean 1000 GBP over here, but whether we picked the term up from y'all, I don't know. I suspect that we did, and that the major cuplprit was the large number of American "detective" story books that flooded the UK market just after the last world war.
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Just to go back towards the beginning of this thread for a moment, the question was asked:
OK. And what does the K come from to mean thousand? kilo?
FWIW there is a convention in the SI unit system that units that are named after a person take a capital letter whereas units that are not take a lower case letter.
So, for example, the unit of vibration is named after a man called Hertz and so one thousand Hertz would be shown as 1000Hz whereas one thousand kilometers would be shown as 1000km.
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Is it me or does the post right above mine have no name? (it sounds like dxb but it doesn't *look like dxb)
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And an enthusiast at that.
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well, with ghost posters and imaginary posts to threads, what will be next? are we seeing the beginning of the total disintegration of the board? I know there are other examples, too, like WO'N and Faldage agreeing with each other... or was it tsuwm... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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WO'N and Faldage agreeing with each other
That was just a momentary glitch. I changed my mind as soon as it was pointed out to me. It could happen to anyone. The dog ate it.
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Pooh-Bah
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(it sounds like dxb but it doesn't *look like dxb)
Gosh! I have a sound as well as a look?
I don't think I want to be given any details, it would be like the first time you heard yourself on a tape recorder - a horrible shock coupled with the realisation that there is very little you can do about it!
Don't know why the dxb didn't come out, wasn't aware of doing anything different. Let's see what happens this time.
dxb (just in case).
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Ha! I knew it, from your 'enthusiastic' approach. 
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