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We’re waging with death on broken benches
By Harold Raley
Correspondent
Published October 25, 2009
We hear a lot these days about bankruptcy. The word comes from the Italian words banca rotta, “broken bench.”
In medieval Italy, Jewish bankers conducted their business from a bench in the public piazza (plaza).
Christians were discouraged from lending because of church teachings against usury.
If a banker defaulted, it was the custom to chop up his bench and so put him out of business.
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Most of us have a mortgage. A mortgage is composed of two French words — mort, which means death, and gage, which is a pledge or wager.
A mortgage is literally a “death pledge.”
If one pays what he has pledged, then the mortgage is dead; but if one dies before the pledge is paid or fails to pay it, then the property goes over to the lender.
A mortgage could be thought of as a “wager with death.”
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Do you have a nickname? In Old English, a nickname was an “ekename,” which meant an “also-name.”
The “n” became attached to ekename and became nekename, or nickname.
Harold Raley lives in Friendswood, where he served for two terms on city council and was mayor pro tem. A linguist, professor and writer, he is the author of a dozen books, speaks several languages, was chairman of foreign languages at the University of Houston and later served as dean of fine arts and humanities at Houston Baptist University. He is senior editor of Halcyon Press Book Publishers in Alvin.
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