Millionaire

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 10 Aug 1999 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>     But the word "millionaire" doesn't come from New York City in the 1850s!
>     The first hit on the Making of America database is the SOUTHERN
>     LITERARY MESSENGER of 1836--discussing a "millionaire" from Boston.
>     The BDE has it in English from 1826, in Benjamin Disraeli's VIVIAN GREY.
>     Disraeli borrowed it from the French word, _millionnaire_.

Thomas Jefferson used _millionnaire_ ("the poorest labourer stood on equal
ground with the wealthiest millionnaire") in 1786.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2