spondulicks or spondulix
Charles Cunningham
I had never heard this slang term for money until Bingo Little used
it in the very first Jeeves/Wooster BBC episode(Wodehouse himself
never used it, as far as I can tell). I assumed it was a British
coinage, but recently found a competing theory.
In Paul de Fillippo's excellent fantasy "Spondulix," (in his sci-fi
collection STRANGE TRADES), he traces the origin of the word to the
Greek word "spondulus", meaning "shell." He (or rather, one of his
characters) theorizes that the term derives from the Native American
practice of using shells for money.
So, what's the story, British AFW participants? Does the term
actually come from some British usage? Or is P de F. correct?
Curiously,
Charles Cunningham
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:910d6026.04091...@posting.google.com...
Here is the entry for this weird word at the Weird Words site,
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-spo1.htm :
'Though originally a bit of mid-nineteenth-century American slang, this has
travelled widely, being cast up on the shores of Britain and Australia among
other places. It's a member of a group of words created in a century-long
fit of logographical exuberation which also gave the world slumgullion,
rambunctious, and absquatulate (not to mention, as Elsie L Warnock did in
Dialect Notes in 1913, such otherwise lost treasures as scrumdifferous,
hyperfirmatious, and supergobosnoptious).
'It would seem from the evidence that spondulicks (either so spelled or as
spondulix) was originally American college slang. One of its earliest
appearances was in a piece about college life in the New York magazine
Vanity Fair in 1860: "My friend the Senior got out of spondulix, and
borrowed [my watch] to spout for the purpose of bucking the Tiger" (to
interpret, his friend had run out of money and pawned the watch to get some
more cash in order to gamble on cards, probably faro). The word was used
later by such literary luminaries as O Henry and Bret Harte. From usage
data, it now looks to be much more common outside the US, to the extent that
the New Oxford Dictionary of English marks it as "British slang".
'Where does it come from? "A fanciful coinage", the big Oxford English
Dictionary says. It has been described as a "perverted and elaborated" form
of greenback (you may feel that to believe spondulicks could come from
greenback requires a perverted imagination all its own). Eric Partridge
suggests it might derive from Greek spondulikos, from spondulos, a species
of shell once used as money.
'However, Doug Wilson pointed out that that Greek stem is also the source of
various English words beginning in spondylo- that refer to the spine or
vertebrae. He suggested that a stack of coins may have been likened to the
spine, with each coin a vertebra. He found a supporting reference in an 1867
book, A Manual of the Art of Prose Composition: for the Use of Colleges and
Schools, by John Mitchell Bonnell. A list of provincialisms included:
"Spondulics-coin piled for counting".
'If it is indeed college slang, either explanation may well be the kind of
academic joke that would appeal. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine.'
In poking about the Web, I also ran into a handout for a college course in
linguistics that list several citations for "spondulix" including this one
which is dated a little later than the previous:
"1863 Those ordering job work should come down with the spondulicks as soon
asthe work is done. (R. H. Thornton, Amer. Gloss. (1912))
(Source:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~albright/ling80v/handouts/Ling80V-Class18Handout.pdf )
As noted above there is the Greek sphondylos, spondylos for vertebrae which
appears in the English spondylitis.
Also I found this reference to a named Australian gold nugget preserved in a
museum in Victoria:
'This nugget was found during November 1872 in Eureka Gully, which is part
of the Jordan's gold field, between Berlin and Wehla, Victoria. It was found
by Wilton and party and weighed in at 155 ounces, measured 17 by 16 by 5
centimetres. It was also associated with some quartz and ironstone.'
(Source: http://www.sbs.com.au/gold/story.html?storyid=113 )
I also ran into a dealer in British and Irish coins who calls his business
The Elusive Spondulix, which is a wonderful phrase, I think.
________
Mortimer Rackstraw, the Great Boloni
"A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand
eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant."
P.G. Wodehouse, "Blandings Castle"
Paul Penna
<fr...@blarg.net> wrote:
> I also ran into a dealer in British and Irish coins who calls his business
> The Elusive Spondulix, which is a wonderful phrase, I think.
W.C. Fields apparently felt the same way about it, uttering it in 1940
in "My Little Chickadee." I wonder if our numismatic friend was a
Fields fan?
--
Paul Penna
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:190920042042003169%tter...@sonic.net...
I knew I associated "spondulix" with Fields but I didn't remember he used
the full phrase. But the moment I read your post, I smote my forehead and
said "Duh". And I meant it to sting.
One of my favorite bits of dialog in this film features another happy bit of
phrase-making from Fields:
Fields: Flower Belle, what a euphonious appellation. Easy on the ears and a
banquet for the eyes.
Mae West : You're kinda cute yourself.
--