finif (was Re: jitney 1912 etc.)

[Wilson Gray]

"Fin," for short. But you don't much hear that or see it these days,
more's the pity.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â finif (was Re: jitney 1912 etc.)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
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>

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