|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
It was not so very long ago that animal pelts could be used to pay debts, purchase food and other things. The term "buck" meaning a dollar is still used frequently. Not clear what a doe sking was worth. From the Internet:
"As the preferred slang term for what Washington Irving called "the almighty dollar," buck in all likelihood sprang from buck skin or buck hide -- a commodity of exchange, and metaphorically a loose measure of value, in Colonial trade with Native Americans. ("He has been robbed of the value of 300 Bucks, & you all know by whom" -- this 1748 quotation comes from the Ohio River Valley, and is cited in Mitford M. Mathews's A Dictionary of Americanisms.) The earliest undisputed example of buck in the precise sense of "dollar" ("mulcted for the sum of twenty bucks") has a Sacramento provenance, and dates back only to Gold Rush times. Although the Forty-niners may well have popularized this new sense, traders at outposts east of the Continental Divide were probably already using it; the scanty written records of vernacular speech of the time preclude certainty. Unlisted in early slang dictionaries, buck seems not to have gained national popularity until the 1890s -- a good example of the slow dissemination of slang in the days before radio, television, and the Internet."
|
|
|
Entire Thread
|
exonumia
|
wwh
|
03/12/03 02:55 PM
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,371
Members9,182
|
Most Online3,341 Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
0 members (),
803
guests, and
0
robots. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
|