What financial term originally referred to a small leather pouch?

Modern financial terminology is deeply grounded in history and physical objects, originating from medieval garments, board games, livestock management, and gambling, long before spreadsheets existed. These 10 terms you use every time you set a budget or swipe a card had a totally different meaning. Prepare to be amazed.

Many centuries ago, when bank accounts didn’t exist, wealth was measured in livestock. Ancient pastoral societies counted cattle, goats, and sheep "by the head" (caput in Latin) to calculate an estate’s net worth.

The Latin adjective capitalis referred to things related to the head, eventually evolving into the Italian capitale during the 16th century to describe a merchant’s stock or investment. Although today investors don’t herd cows on Wall Street, the linguistic link between counting livestock "heads" and financial "capital" remains intact.

In the modern world, "budgeting" means managing a digital spreadsheet, but long ago a budget was a physical container. The word stems from the Latin bulga (a leather knapsack), which entered Middle French as bougette, meaning a small leather pouch or wallet.

In 18th-century Great Britain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the chief finance minister) carried a leather bag filled with national revenue statements and expenditure plans to the House of Commons. Opening the bag to present the nation’s finances was described as "opening the budget". Over time, the name transferred from the pouch itself to the financial plans kept inside.

The word check traces back to the game of chess. Borrowed through Old French from the Persian word šāh ("king"), placing an opponent’s piece in check was a direct warning that the king was under threat.

From the notion of putting a limit on the king’s movement, the verb check expanded into general English to mean inspecting, halting, or verifying accuracy. By the late 18th century, financial institutions issued written payment orders featuring a counterfoil (a slip retained by the bank to "check" for forgery), giving rise to the modern paper check.

During the 17th century, shipowners and financiers gathered at Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse in London to negotiate marine insurance for transatlantic trade voyages.

A document would be prepared describing the vessel’s cargo, crew, destination, and risks. Investors willing to take on a portion of the financial risk would literally write their names and the exact financial share they agreed to cover under the proposal text. Consequently, anyone guaranteeing financial risk in exchange for a premium became known as an "underwriter".

In modern stock markets, a "blue-chip" stock stands for a reliable and financially sound company with a long record of stable earnings. However, the metaphor comes straight from high-stakes poker.

By the 19th century, casinos assigned different monetary values to colored gaming chips, reserving white for low values, red for mid values, and blue for the highest value chips. In the 1920s, financial journalist Oliver Gingold of The Wall Street Journal began referring to high-priced stocks as "blue-chip stocks", permanently embedding poker jargon into market terminology.

To invest capital today implies buying financial assets with the expectation of generating profit. Historically, however, invest meant to put on clothing. Derived from Latin in- ("into") and vestire ("to dress," the root of vestment and vest), the word described granting power or office to someone by dressing them in official robes.

Italian merchants in the 16th century adapted investire metaphorically to describe "clothing" or "dressing" capital into a new commercial form, such as trade ventures.

A financial penalty imposed for a violation seems harsh, but the original concept of a fine was peaceful resolution. Rooted in the Latin finis (meaning "end", "limit", or "termination"), the word moved through Old French as a term for bringing a dispute to an end.

In Medieval English systems, a fine was a sum paid by a defendant to terminate legal proceedings and settle a feud. Initially, it wasn’t a punishment, but a final settlement payment that concluded a conflict once and for all.

Nowadays we view income as money earned from employment or investments, but its original 14th-century meaning had nothing to do with finance. The word was a compound of "in" and "come", denoting a physical arrival or entrance (such as a person entering a room).

In theological contexts, it described spiritual inspirations "coming into" the soul. It was not until the late 17th century that the term narrowed down to mean the monetary inflow generated by an estate or enterprise.

A fund represents a foundational reserve of capital. The word stems from the Latin fundus, which referred to the bottom or base of an object, as well as a foundational piece of land.

The word entered English via the French fond (meaning ground, bottom, or stock). In the late 17th century, English financiers Latinized the spelling to fund, using it to mean a solid bottom layer or monetary store upon which financial operations could securely rest.

As we know, crash is a sensory word describing the loud, smashing sound of objects colliding violently. Its metaphoric entrance into financial markets occurred during 18th-century speculative panics, particularly the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and the Mississippi Scheme in Paris.

People used the word to evoke the sudden, noisy destruction of inflated paper fortunes hitting rock bottom. The term became permanently cemented in global economics after the catastrophic October 1929 "Wall Street Crash".

Stories in the rainbow

Which hue is named after a duck? The origin of color names

Image: Copper and Wild

How many colors do you think you could name –and identify– correctly? It may seem like kindergarten business, but beyond the primary colors and their combinations, the shades get more nuanced. Have you ever wondered how hues got their names? What did we call "orange" first, was it the color or the fruit? Let’s explore the history of how color names came to be!

Image: Shashwat Narkhede

"Blue" comes from the Old French word bleu, which in turn has roots in the Germanic word blāw. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Originally, blāw meant "shining," referring to the shimmer of light.

It wasn't until later that it specifically described the color of the sea and that of the sky. Think about it: the shade that so many people pick as their favorite might have been called "shimmer".

Image: CHUTTERSNAP

The grass is always unripe on the other side of the fence. Or that’s what they might have said in Old English. In the past, their term grēne meant something was immature or not-yet-ready, so it eventually was assigned to the color.

If you pay attention, you might see some shared roots in words like "grow," "grass," and "grain."

Image: Łukasz Łada

Maybe you guessed it: "Yellow" comes from the Old English word geolu, which is related to words like "gold" and "yolk."

Interestingly, geolu was also used to describe shades of brown and even green! In time it settled into the bright, cheerful color we know and love today: that of sunlight.

Image: engin akyurt

You probably know that purple used to be linked to royalty, power, and riches. The explanation is closely linked with its etymology.

"Purple" derives from the Latin purpura, which refers to a species of sea snail. In ancient times, thousands of snails would have to be milked or crushed to obtain dye of this rare hue, making purple fabrics extremely expensive.

Image: Gabrielle Henderson

A color popularly associated with boredom and blandness –sorry, fans of beige! Its name comes from the French term "natural wool," referring to the undyed color of sheep's wool.

Of course, a similar color is "vanilla," which points at the color of the flowers that produce the tasty beans. And what do you know –that term is also associated with mildness.

Image: Artur Opala

You wouldn’t expect such a bright and cheerful color to have originated in a war. But this hue got its name after the Battle of Magenta, fought in Italian territory in 1859.

It’s because this new aniline dye was discovered in France around the same time, and the Franco-Italian victory was honored by assigning it the bloody battle’s name.

Image: J Cruikshank

This beautiful blue-green hue gets its name from a bird! The common teal, a small duck with a distinctive colored stripe around its eyes, lent its name to this color.

It's a relatively recent addition to the color lexicon, only becoming popular in the mid-20th century.

Image: Simone Dalmeri

"Indigo" comes from the Latin word indicum, meaning "Indian," because this vibrant dye was originally imported from India to Europe.

Today, we use "indigo" to refer to one of the colors in the rainbow, nestled between blue and violet. In the Hindu religion, this precise hue represents the chakra of the third eye.

Image: Mustafa akın

This one's a bit of a late bloomer. Before the juicy orange fruit made its way to Europe from Asia, English speakers didn't really have a specific word for it. They'd call it geoluhread. Does that ring a bell? Exactly, it combines _geolu (_yellow) and read (red), its two neighboring colors.

But when the fruit arrived from Asia, with its Sanskrit term naranga (orange tree), a version of that new word was assigned to the vibrant color.

Image: Anna Evans

The French had a word for a specific chestnut – a large, brown chestnut that grew on a specific type of tree. This term was marron. Marrons were often used to make a reddish-brown dye, which they named after the nuts.

It's not related to the verb "maroon," though. That one derives from the Spanish cimmaron, which meant "wild, untamed, unruly, fugitive."

Image: Anna Holodna

Think pink! This delicate color comes from the Dutch word pinksterbloem, which was a mouthful. The term was the name of a type of flower with jagged edges of this hue.

Before, the English terms for this color evoked pale skin: They used "flesh color" or "incarnation."

Image: Divazus Fabric Store

The word "red" traces its roots back to the Old English word rēad. It's related to words in other languages like rood in Dutch and rot in German.

In turn, "scarlet" goes back to the Persian word saqerlât, a type of fine cloth. In the Middle Ages, scarlet dye was incredibly expensive, made from the dried bodies of a tiny insect called the kermes. That’s why it became associated with wealth, luxury, and even royalty.

Image: Nicolas Thomas

The color of mystery, elegance, and that little black dress everyone should have in their closet. "Black" comes from the Old English word blæc, which meant "dark" or "ink."

Some of the earliest archives of this word in writing uses blæc to refer to "that dark spot in the middle of the eye."