Sackie Watch

[Mike Salovesh]

With regard to "Sackie" for the new U.S. dollar coin, Bruce Dykes wrote:

> Haven't heard it yet, but then again, I almost never hear currency nicknames
> outside of fiction and documentary usage. I've never heard sawbuck, fin, or
> cnote in real use, and for that matter, as far as amount nicknames go,
> large, deuce, g's, or boxes of ziti <g>, I've never heard those used either.

Could that be another instance of generation gap?  "Deuce", "fin",
"sawbuck", "double sawbuck", and "Gee" (for 'grand', or $1000) were
parts of common speech for my father and his generation -- people who
became adults in the 1920s, more or less.  "C-note" (i.e., 'century
note' or $100) was used less frequently, perhaps because it referred to
a piece of paper that was unusual rather than to a quantity of money.
(I did hear people talk about "a couple of C's" as a quantity term,
however.)

"Fin" (from either German or Yiddish "FÜNF", five)was still a fairly
common term for five bucks for my generation around the time of "our"
war -- the Korean police action. Most of the other terms were pretty
much obsolete by then among people I talked with.

Does anybody have a handle on when "bill" replaced "note" as the common
term for a piece of paper of monetary value (e.g., "c-note" vs. "hundred
dollar bill")?

-- mike salovesh                    <salovesh at niu.edu>
PEACE !!!