al@mot.UUCP (Al Filipski) (07/01/85)
In article <196@persci.UUCP> bill@persci.UUCP writes: >By the way, does anybody know the origin of the word 'dollar'? I've never met >anyone who does. The nearest word to it is the Spanish (Latin?) 'dolore', >which, I'm told, means 'pain'. In time-honored net tradition, I won't bother to look this up, but I seem to recall that "thal" is a germanic stem meaning "valley", whence we get words like "dale" and "Neanderthal". The connection is geographic, where a monetary unit acquired the name of the place that issued it, which happened to be in a valley. -------------------------------- Alan Filipski, UNIX group, Motorola Microsystems, Tempe, AZ U.S.A {seismo|ihnp4}!ut-sally!oakhill!mot!al allegra!sftig!mot!al ucbvax!arizona!asuvax!mot!al -------------------------------- In this vale of toil and sin your head grows bald but not your chin. -- Burma Shave