the history of the phrase "to make money"

This link offers some interesting background on the history of the phrase "to make money."

Post 1

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 9:06pm

I noticed the comment when I first read it, but took it as literary license, probably something she heard from Paterson. That it would have been an English and not solely American expression goes without saying. Complaining that the capitalistic Romans used the term first hardly embarrasses the Anglophones in comparison. To show that the term was of no significance you'd have to show that plundering cultures like the early Mongols or the Sioux used it to refer to seizing booty. Contemporary German, Spanish and Russian all use an analog of "to make."

Post 2

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 5:35am

Since Russian uses the equivalent of "make" in this phrase, how did Rand not know that?
(Or did early 20th-century Russian differ from current Russian in that respect?)

Post 3

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 5:47am

Rand (drawing on Paterson again?) also makes Galt err on the history of the dollar sign.

Sources cited in this piece show that the dollar sign pre-dates the U.S. by a few years, and therefore could not have arisen as an abbrevation of "United States."

Available evidence suggests that the symbol arose as an abbreviation of "peso" (superimposed "p" and "s") -- Mexico in fact uses "$" to this day as the peso symbol.

(The Wikipedia article at the link above in fact cites, and discounts, Rand in the article's discussion of various "alternative hypotheses" -- so labeled by Wikipedia -- on the symbol's origin: "This theory [that "$" arose from "US"], popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged [10], does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.[11]")

Post 4

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 9:08am

Multiple sources are sited in the article, but they are all references to the statement of one person in multiple publications, a certain Florian Cajori. The wikipedia article has many errors, dead links supposedly to the treasury, references that don't support the claim. For example, see this "source" which is used to support the idea that the dollar sign comes from ps. Item 15 shows the earliest double bar s used in new orleans and philadelphia and it is not used in any spanish location. The spanish notations are clearly ps'es while the americans are us and double bar esses. That double bar s is obviously a superimposed us with the loop at the bottom of the u evident in item 15.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/05, 9:15am)

Post 5

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 11:28am

If the "peso/ps" theory falls short, then who invented the dollar symbol -- and when? Some American, somewhere, decided that this symbol would stand for the dollar -- I wish I knew the name of that person. (Even more, I wish I knew how anyone persuaded Mexico to use a "U.S."-derived symbol to represent the Mexican peso.)

Meanwhile, Google gives quite a few results for Florian Cajori. Ted -- from what you see here, would you regard Cajori as a man likely to know the subjects he writes about?

Post 6

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 11:55am

My objection is not to Cajori himself but the fact that the wp article has ten different citations all of which trace back to Cajori directly or indirectly. The citations make it look like they are independent sources. That is a violation of wp's npov policy. The artcicle should be edited to say this is his theory, not the consensus of different scholars. And you have to look at the image of Cajori's tracings in google books. The ps forms are distinct form the us form from new orleans in 1778 (#15) which is undoubtedly a us.

A screen capture of the US form in item 15 here would be most informative.

Post 7

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 1:34pm

Thanks for clarifying. So ... how *did* the Mexicans (and the Brazilians, and the Portuguese back when their currency symbol was "$") *also* come to use this symbol?

Post 8

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 10:49pm

Okay, here it is the entire basis of Florian's case, and the only cited source at the wikipedia article that says that the American dollar sign comes from the pS sign for the peso

Look at item number fifteen. It is clearly two symbols, a p with an s above and a U with an s over it. There is no intermediate. There is no U with an s at any Spanish location.

Post 9

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 5:57pm

I have posted the "evidence" that the US dollar sign comes from the Spanish one. No comments?

Post 10

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 7:48pm

Old news to me.

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 8:31pm

Do you accept it, Joe?

I don't see any sign at all that the US sign, as evident in sample 15b (New Orleans), 16 (ibid), thru 28 (Philadelphia, is intermediate with the PS, form or that the US form is ever used in Spanish locations. It is a weird and long stretch to argue that US evolved organically from the PS form, and still meant PS, but, coincidentally, only in a place whose initials were US.

Post 12

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 8:40pm

I'm not losing sleep over it.
(Edited by Joe Maurone on 1/08, 8:40pm)

Post 13

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 9:22pm

Ah, the noble agnostic.

Post 14

Friday, January 8, 2010 - 11:14pm