The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-05-10
Study In Derivation

"I. K.'' asks the origin of the word "plunks,' a colloquial familiar term for dollars, says the New York Times. He wonders whether it has any association with the Plunkitt family. T remember hearing the word before the Civil war. It was in use after that historic event, certainly as late as tho '70s, in New York, where l was then living"
 The word is still heard in Boston, al- though our best people, prefer .bones." sometimes cold bones.'' Strange to say, "plunks.' or "plunkers" is not found in any slang dictionary of importance, al- though many less pleasing or foolish sym onyms of money are treated with al- most reverential consideration by com pliers. We find no word in dialect forms that suggests an origin. Has the plunk- CT in the game of marbles anything to do with it? The nicker,' sometimes called a ''plunker,' was a bigger that had been partly vitrified in the fire, and generally had one side burned to a darker hue than the other. Did not ''plunks'' originally refer to heavy coins rather than to bills? Here is one of those ques- tions concerning derivation, which, like the precise nature of the Sirens song or the name assumed by Achilles when he hid himself among women, is pug zling, but not beyond all conjecture . Plunks. The word is significant. impress sive. Hearing it. we think of doubloons, moidores, pieces of eight; of ventripotent, auripotent, auriferous, and vociferous per- sons, bank directors. pondhoders, rent lers, shakers of pagods. trees
 Plunks, cold bones, long green, insect powder. mazooma (with it's variant ma zoomda) words as sweet to us as was the sound of Mesopotamia to the pious old lady in the pew yet they are not in the list that fills over two pages in Slang and Analogues. list that be- gins actual, ballast, means,'' and ends with ''wad, wedge, wherewith, yellow boys, yennoms.' We learn again that f1,O0O,000 is a marigold, G1c0,000 plum, f5OO monkey and 2s Cd a coachwheel, five-spot piece, Hatch, fore coach wheel, George, half-case. half dollar half OK ford half yenork, madAa-caroon, or slat >Great is the English languagei But lis ten to Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi, the au- thor of British Synonymy or, an At tempt at Regulating the Choice of Words in Familiar Conversation" Dublin. 1704) Money, cash, cole, assets, ready rino. chink, corianders, form a string of hate full words-synonymous enough, or near yso, in the vulgar and despicable dia- lect of coarse traders in the hour of merriment; but to be ever sedulously avoided by those who mean to be thought eminent for choice of phrase and ele- gance of conversation. She quotes Dr Johnson as having said there was such thing as "a city voice. different from that of persons who had from their youth inhabited the court end of the town. We know. Mrs. Piozzi, what Dr. Johnson said or you when you were weary of widow hood, although the brewer Thrale had left you not merely "a parcel of boilers and vats' but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of svarice.'' Dr. John- son may have sniffed at ready rino, r ana snorted at "chink'" but he surely would have smiled on ''plunks.' and
 piunkers" There is something substan- tiai and sturdy in the mere sound of the word.