finif (was Re: jitney 1912 etc.)

[Mark Mandel]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course what comes up today at N'archive may not reliably come up
tomorrow.
----------

_Daily News_ [Marshall MI], 23 April 1903: p. '2':

<<Picturesque Additions to the Language Used by Newsboys. / Here is the
St. Louis newsboys' glossary of slang, as revised and edited by
"Noddles" [?: "Noddies"?] Fagan, a famous newsboy now in St. Louis, says
the Post-Dispatch of that city: / Meg, a cent; jitney, a nickel; case
note, a dollar; pubil, $2, finif, $5;
...

... "Finif" would appear German. ...

<<<<<<<<<<<

I always took "finif" to be  Yiddish. Lessee...
-----

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fin

fin ... U.S. underworld slang sense of "$5 bill" is 1925, from Yiddish
finif "five," from Ger. fünf. The same word had been used in England
1868 to mean "five pound note" (earlier finnip, 1839).
-----

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/finif
(Shelta)

finif
>From the Yiddish finf, "five".
A monetary note of five pounds.

References:
Language in Danger Andrew Dalby, 2003

-----
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.fandom/2006-03/msg00002.html

Also finif, finiff, finnif; Yinglish, compare German fuenf.
Leo Rosten, _The Joys of Yiddish._

-----

But also "finif" in Pennsylvania German, which is unlikely to be the
source here -- just a parallel development to the Yiddish:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/cgu475 (Google Books), from
The Pennsylvania German Dialect
By Marion Dexter Learned
Published by Press of I. Friedenwald, 1889
Original from Harvard University
Digitized Aug 2, 2005

-----

Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org