Question: I have two fairly simple questions (suggested, I admit, by the holiday season). What are the origins of the word "dollar"? And who was the first to refer to the "almighty dollar"?Answer: In the mountains of Bohemia in the Czech Republic, just a few kilometers south of the border with Germany, is the small town of Jachymov. In the early 16th century, when the town was known by its German name, Sankt Joachimsthal, a silver mine was opened nearby, and coins were minted. They were guldens, a type of coin used at the time, but were designated "Joachimstaler," that is, (guldens) "of Joachimsthal." In due time this was shortened to "taler" in German. In the mid-16th century, the Dutch or Low German form "daler" was borrowed into English to refer to the taler and to other coins that were patterned after it. The spelling saw a lot of different versions -- "daleir," "dallor," "dalder," "dolor," "daller," "dollor" -- until it was established as "dollar" by 1700.
One of the coins referred to as "dollar" was the Spanish peso, which was widely used in the Spanish American and English colonies. It was important enough for Benjamin Franklin to write of its exchange rate in 1767: "A dollar thereby coming to be rated at eight shillings in paper money of New York." When it came to choosing a national currency, our founding fathers rejected the British pound and shilling and modeled the new American money after the Spanish dollar, "the most familiar of all to the mind of the people," according to Thomas Jefferson. He proposed it in 1782, three years before the American dollar was officially adopted by the Continental Congress. (The mint wasn't actually established until 1792.) Today, many different countries use a currency called "dollar."
Apparently, it didn't take long for the dollar to become "almighty." The first known use of the term was in a story by Washington Irving, published in 1836 or 1837, in which he referred to "the almighty dollar" as "that great object of universal devotion throughout our land." Another early example is found in Charles Dickens' "American Notes" (1842): "The golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with the giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast counting-house which lies beyond the Atlantic;. . . and the almighty dollar sinks into something comparatively insignificant, amidst a whole pantheon of better gods."
Question: Through volunteer work at my son's school, I have become acquainted with one of the other mothers who volunteers on the same day. She is very well educated, and I admit that sometimes I don't understand the words she uses. The other day she kept talking about something called an "object true-something." I couldn't find it in the dictionary. Can you help?
Answer: It sounds like your friend was probably using the term "objet trouve" (written with an acute accent over the final "e" and pronounced "ob-jay troo-vay"). An "objet trouve" is a natural object, such as a piece of driftwood, that is found by chance and held to have aesthetic value especially because of the working of natural forces on it. This is the strict sense of the term, but it is often extended to other objects, such as toilets, wrecked cars or scrap metal, that are displayed as art.
"Objet trouve" comes from French, where it literally means "found object." The term entered 20th-century English when modern artists challenged a traditional distinction between art and nature, which held that true art must be a product of human handiwork and that natural objects don't qualify as artistic. If you have shells, rocks or other such objects displayed in your home, you have "objets trouves" without even knowing it.
This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Send questions to: Merriam-Webster's Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.(C) 1999 Merriam-Webster Inc. Dist. by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service