topic Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000? in SmorgasBoard

How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:58:46 GMT

Why not call it Thou, short for Thoushand Dollars? Wondering if the word Grand has special meaning. Thanks.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MsKiwi — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:16:12 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Why not call it Thou, short for Thoushand Dollars? Wondering if the word Grand has special meaning. Thanks.

I don't know, but it would be grand if I had a grand.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:37:14 GMT

Speaking of the 15th century, that’s when English adopted the Old French word “grant” (ultimately from the Latin “grandis,” great or large) as “grand,” with the sense of not simply “large,” but also “imposing” or “great, famous, exalted or important.” Over the next few centuries “grand” was frequently used in official titles (e.g., Grand Marshall), as well as in informal appellations honoring individuals (”grand old warrior,” etc.), and applied to events and things judged to be of great importance. Eventually, “grand” took on a more general sense in the popular vocabulary of “impressively large” (e.g., Grand Canyon) or “noble.” (The use of “grand” in “grandfather” and “grandmother,” however, is rooted in parallel terms in French, and actually predates the use of the “large” sort of “grand” in English by a century.)

Over the years, “grand” also acquired a variety of vernacular and slang senses, including “grand” meaning a large piano, as well as such forms as “grand prize” and “grand slam,” the latter once a term in whist or bridge, now used to mean “complete triumph” in any field.

The use of “grand” to mean “one thousand dollars” does indeed come from American underworld slang, first appearing around 1915. It was one of a number of slang terms, some still in use, for specific denominations of bills (or that amount of money), including “c-note” (or “century note”) for a one-hundred dollar bill (from the Roman numeral “C,” denoting 100). A “sawbuck” was a ten-dollar bill, from the resemblance of the Roman numeral “X” (ten) that once appeared thereon to a sawhorse, and a twenty-dollar bill was known as, logically, a “double sawbuck.”

The use of “grand” for a thousand dollars (or a thousand-dollar bill) may seem puzzling in this day of hedge-fund managers and their billion-dollar bonuses, but in 1915 one thousand dollars was a very large sum of money, far more than the average working stiff would ever possess at one time. So it made sense to pay tribute to such an impressive sum with the word “grand,” and the name stuck.

Source: Word Detective, April 2008 Issue

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Junejer — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:16:28 GMT

jaybird201 wrote:
Speaking of the 15th century, that’s when English adopted the Old French word “grant” (ultimately from the Latin “grandis,” great or large) as “grand,” with the sense of not simply “large,” but also “imposing” or “great, famous, exalted or important.” Over the next few centuries “grand” was frequently used in official titles (e.g., Grand Marshall), as well as in informal appellations honoring individuals (”grand old warrior,” etc.), and applied to events and things judged to be of great importance. Eventually, “grand” took on a more general sense in the popular vocabulary of “impressively large” (e.g., Grand Canyon) or “noble.” (The use of “grand” in “grandfather” and “grandmother,” however, is rooted in parallel terms in French, and actually predates the use of the “large” sort of “grand” in English by a century.)

Over the years, “grand” also acquired a variety of vernacular and slang senses, including “grand” meaning a large piano, as well as such forms as “grand prize” and “grand slam,” the latter once a term in whist or bridge, now used to mean “complete triumph” in any field.

The use of “grand” to mean “one thousand dollars” does indeed come from American underworld slang, first appearing around 1915. It was one of a number of slang terms, some still in use, for specific denominations of bills (or that amount of money), including “c-note” (or “century note”) for a one-hundred dollar bill (from the Roman numeral “C,” denoting 100). A “sawbuck” was a ten-dollar bill, from the resemblance of the Roman numeral “X” (ten) that once appeared thereon to a sawhorse, and a twenty-dollar bill was known as, logically, a “double sawbuck.”

The use of “grand” for a thousand dollars (or a thousand-dollar bill) may seem puzzling in this day of hedge-fund managers and their billion-dollar bonuses, but in 1915 one thousand dollars was a very large sum of money, far more than the average working stiff would ever possess at one time. So it made sense to pay tribute to such an impressive sum with the word “grand,” and the name stuck.

Source: Word Detective, April 2008 Issue

This is exactly why we should use M (Roman Numeral for thousand) for thousand instead of the K. Whaddyasay? Who's with me?

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:06:35 GMT

You're crazy ByrdMan. It makes way more sense to use an arbitrary combination of Roman numerals, English measurements and metric measurements than to convert everything to the same system.

^Countries that still use non-metric measurement systems...

Message Edited by jaybird201 on 10-14-2008 03:06 PM

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MidnightVoice — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:06:35 GMT

@Junejer wrote:
This is exactly why we should use M (Roman Numeral for thousand) for thousand instead of the K. Whaddyasay? Who's with me?

That I am an American, not a Roman

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Junejer — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:01:03 GMT

K isn't American. You guys are no fun.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:18:53 GMT

I don't know.

But I can tell you some equally unfathomable slang terms for various amounts of money that us brit types have... pretty sure none of these terms are used in the US, although I could be wrong!

A monkey - £500

A pony - £25

A score - £20 (well, that one's obvious)

A ton - £100

... errrm, there's loads more (wait! £5 is a 'rocket'), but those are the first that spring to mind that you could actually say and (mostly) be understood. No idea where any of those came from, either.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MattH — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:50:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I don't know.

But I can tell you some equally unfathomable slang terms for various amounts of money that us brit types have... pretty sure none of these terms are used in the US, although I could be wrong!

A monkey - £500
A pony - £25
A score - £20 (well, that one's obvious)
A ton - £100

... errrm, there's loads more (wait! £5 is a 'rocket'), but those are the first that spring to mind that you could actually say and (mostly) be understood. No idea where any of those came from, either.

British money terminology was even more fun before you folks went decimal -- all those shillings and farthings and florins and guineas, not to mention slang terms like bob and tanner. I've read a LOT of British popular fiction from before 1971 and conversations about money in them have a certain ring that Euros and Pounds and Pence just haven't got.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MidnightVoice — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:53:25 GMT

Not to mention dosh and quid

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MidnightVoice — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:56:06 GMT

And nicker.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:40:02 GMT

Bocker. Oops. Sorry.

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Methinks K for thousand is information age stuff.

K = Kilo

M = Mega

OK, technically, it's metric, but it comes from our everyday casual association with computers.

Although a Kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes.

I wonder whether G for Giga will come to represent a billion or will we stick with B?

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

MattH — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:48:17 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Methinks K for thousand is information age stuff.

K = Kilo
M = Mega

OK, technically, it's metric, but it comes from our everyday casual association with computers.

Although a Kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes.

I wonder whether G for Giga will come to represent a billion or will we stick with B?

For a very interesting article on the confusing history of binary and decimal quantities, see:

Wikipedia

Re: How did we come up with the term "Grand" for $1,000?

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:14:05 GMT

Noah_Bodie wrote:

Methinks K for thousand is information age stuff.

K = Kilo
M = Mega

OK, technically, it's metric, but it comes from our everyday casual association with computers.

Although a Kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes.

I wonder whether G for Giga will come to represent a billion or will we stick with B?

Nah, I've gotta disagree. I think that most of us had some sort of dim awareness that kilo = thousand (kilogram, kilometer; about the only thing that we remembered from grade school math).

But beyond that, most people read M = million, B = billion, and onward, to the point where we're talking about the US debt burden.