ORIGIN OF WORDS - PART 2 CAPITAL From the human head!! Capital in the sense of wealth comes ultimately from the Latin caput, "head". The Latin root of caput appears in scores of English words in various forms depending upon whether it came to us through the French or directly from the Latin. Capital and cattle , for example, are from caput, for in the earliest days a man;s wealth , or capital,was reckoned in cattle, and we still speak of herd of a thousand " head" A Chattel mortgage is really a "cattle" !!!mortgage.and up to the 16th century the English spoke of " goods and cattals" instead of "GOODS AND CHATTELS" Well - after reading the roots "let us not get cow-ed down"!!! When you refer business... the next word comes to our mind is MONEY, So here we go tracing the origin of this word.>>>>>> In Roman mythology Juno Regina was the wife of Jupiter and queen of the heavens. Juno assumed a host of divine responsibilities, one of them was goddess of warning. The Romans were so grateful to Juno for telling them about the dangers ahead on various occasions that they built a temple to her on the Capitoline Hill and when coinage was devised their set their MINT in her temple, and as Juno Moneta, the goddess became guardian of the finances Moneta was derived from the Latin word moneo, "warn"and finally entered Old French as moneie and eventually became MONEY. Through another path,moneta came into Old English as mynet which finally was transformed into MINT, that place where MONEY is made!!! Well- Diwali is round the corner.... and the Laxmi puja will be agenda too!... so here is wishing all in our forum .... and let me sign off with this quote by Addison "A money-lender. He serves you in the present tense He lends you in the conditional mood, keeps you in the subjunctive and ruins you in the future.... If we really start digging into the stories and metaphors we come across sparkling figures of speech. For example the word business came from several forms as bissinesse, besynes, besiness, bysness, buseness, and so on. Business is essentially busy-ness, which is simply being busy about something. But you will surprised in early days if one says I am in business "you are suspected of being engaged in impudent and mischievous activity!!! Later after several decades of evolution of tasks, activities, commercial transactions, documents, terms and conditions this word was given the current currency!!! Now before you say " well this is non of my business" think few times!!!
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:04:01 +0000
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