Attention, slackers!

As you peruse this April 10 edition of Webb, you have less than a week to get your taxes done.

Now in case you need an excuse to procrastinate longer, Webb’s Weird Words herewith presents a short list of money-words — in honor of the approaching April 15 deadline:

Most of our coins got their names from the fraction of a dollar they represent — as in, for example, quarter and half-dollar. Naturally that also covers cent — a shortening of the Latin centum (“hundred”), from which we get such terms as century, bicentennial, centimeter, centipede, percent and centurion (a Roman soldier in charge of 100 men).

Dime, with its root meaning “tenth,” is likewise related to decimal, decade, decibel and even decimate. (The latter, meaning “wipe out,” stems from a Roman method of punishment that involved executing one in every 10 rebels.)

Nickel and penny are not from this group of fraction-words, however.

Our current nickel is so called because it contains that element — though it’s mostly copper. According to the official website of U.S. Mint, nickel originally meant “rascal” in German; it is shortened from kupfernickel, literally “false copper” — a term invented by miners because the cheaper element was often mistaken for its more valuable cousin.

The ancient origin of penny, on the other hand, is shrouded in obscurity, and no one knows where it came from — though many countries have a similar money-word, including the old German pfenning and of course, the British penny (plural: pence). In fact, our common use of penny is a borrowing from England; the official designation (seen on the back of the coin): one cent.

As for the almighty dollar — I saved this for last because its etymology is more complex:

Essentially, it’s a respelling of the German thaler (pronounced with a hard “th,” as in Thomas); this in turn is related to the English word dale, meaning “valley.” No longer used much, it remains fairly visible in such place-names as Scarsdale, Riverdale, Lauderdale and Glendale.

The weird origin of dollar was recently pointed out to me by my friend Steve Shope, a local businessman, Webb reader and — as it turns out — quite the expert in oddball etymologies.

Steve noted out that the “thaler” was originally a German silver coin. Produced in a region of Bohemia called Joachimstal (“Joachim’s Valley”), it was then called a Joachimsthaler, which was later shortened and respelled to our familiar unit of paper currency.

Steve then tied this to the well-known term Neanderthal, an ancient, extinct humanoid:

“In the late 19th century,” he wrote in an email, “we discovered the first fossilized human remains, also in the region of Bohemia. This was in a cave in the Neander Valley, or in that Germanic language … Neander Thal. This means that dollar and Neanderthal are connected.”

I myself already knew some of this through another odd conjunction: Years ago, I noticed that several of my church’s favorite hymns were composed by the German theologian Joachim Neander. (His many tunes include “Wondrous King, All-Glorious,” “Open Now, Thy Gates of Beauty” and “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”) Though now somewhat obscure, he was once so widely known that the valley now called Neandertal had actually been named in his honor.

How weird is it that a Christian hymnist gave us the name of our most famous caveman?

As an interesting addendum, Mr. Shope observed that the U.S. originally based its monetary system on the Spanish silver dollar — which he called “the first global currency.” Unlike our adapted coin, however, the Spanish dollar could easily be divided into eight — which is where we get the phrase pieces of eight, occasionally heard in pirate tales and films.

These smaller segments were sometimes called “bits,” resulting in the once-common designation for our quarter: “two bits” (two eighths). And thus comes the phrase “shave and a haircut — two bits.”

Steve and I would love to tell you that this was the first “bitcoin,” ha ha. However, that term for electronic currency comes instead from the computing word bit, meaning a unit of information. And this, in turn, is a blend of binary and digit. Which I did not know till I wrote this column.

Now to get us back on task:

Tax is part of a large Latin and Greek word-group including taxonomy, tactic and taxi. (The latter is shortened from the fare-calculator called a taximeter.) Originally connoting “assessment, evaluation or handling,” tax is likely connected to tang-, meaning “touch” — from which we get tangible, tangent (line touching a circle) and even … tag!

Sadly, I’m pretty sure the IRS wants to do more than merely touch your money. So, get those receipts and 1040s together, and pitch in your two cents!

If only.