The History of Economics Embedded in English (Michael Ferber May 28, 2024, In Depth NH)
Let’s start with “economics” itself. When I was in school the girls all took “Home Economics.” That phrase struck me as odd at the time, and I explained it to myself as a set of skills for managing a home “economically” or frugally. I only learned much later that the phrase hearkened to oldest use of “economics,” which comes from a Greek word, oikonomia, which meant “management of the household.” In Homer the oikos is the entire estate or establishment, not just the house: buildings, family, clients, servants, slaves, animals, croplands, and pastures. In 18th-century English the sense of domestic management remained in use: one could still speak of a “private economy” or “an economy too sumptuous for one’s means.” In the 19th century John Ruskin, evoking the etymology to show how “economics” had drifted from its real purpose, wrote, “All true economy is ‘Law of the house’.” The phrase “political economy” appeared in the 18th century and since then the default sense of “economy” has come to be the organization of national or international goods and services, and “domestic” in this context now means “national.” So the girls in their Home Ec classes were going back to the root of the matter.
Several common words began as names of physical objects and then grew more abstract, a frequent semantic path for words of many kinds. A “bank” was originally a “bench” (from the same root) on which money and ledgers were laid during a transaction. A “budget” was originally a “pouch or bag,” from French bougette, from Latin bulga, meaning “leather sack.” The Oxford English Dictionary reports that “The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in presenting his annual statement, was formerly said to open the budget.” “Fiscal” comes from Latin fiscus, originally “basket,” then “purse,” then “state treasury.” “Salary” derives from Latin salarium, or “money paid to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt”; “salt” is sal. It’s fun to imagine the primitive economy as carried out by opening bags or baskets on a bench and exchanging what is in them for salt.
As for “exchequer,” though we seldom use the word in America, it is related to “checkers” and “chess.” The Old French word eschequier (“chess board),” named for the table cloth divided into squares (like “checkerboard” cloths today) with counters used for calculating sums, was used in the treasury or revenue office of the Norman kings of England. “Chess,” by the way, is really the plural of “check,” which is what you say when you threaten your opponent’s king, because “check” actually means “king.” It comes from the Persian word shah. (The chesspiece “rook” is also Persian.) “Checkmate” is shah mat, “the king is dead.” But I digress.
