Origins
Slang can infiltrate most any element of daily life. Take, for example, money. Much of the London slang about money is believed to have been imported from India by returning servicemen during the nineteenth century. The terms monkey, meaning £500, and pony, meaning £25, are believed to have come from old Indian rupee banknotes, which used to feature images of those animals. Another money slang word, nicker, which means £1, is thought to be connected to the American nickel. Wonga, which describes an unspecified amount of money, may come from the Romany word for coal, wanger.
Read more about this topic: London Slang
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)