moola antedated to 1937

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:37 AM -0400 7/28/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Nice.
>
>An acquaintance of mine suspected that "moola" might be related to the
>Arabic root "m-l" implying property or substance (IIRC).  He was going to
>Egypt anyway and said he would test his theory.
>
>No dice.  The Egyptians stared at him. "Moola" was meaningless.
>
>JL

According to the OED, it's also "probably unrelated to European
Romani _mol-_ 'to be worth'."  Nice to know.  It's probably also
unrelated to the Persian/Urdu/Arabic _mullah_ orig. 'lord, master',
despite the hundreds of google hits for "a lot of mullah".

LH

>
>On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      moola antedated to 1937
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  OED and HDAS have moola(h) from 1939
>>
>>
>>  Sunday Morning Star, Wilmington Delaware [and other newspapers]- Google
>>  News Archive - Dec 19, 1937 p. 38 col. 4
>>
>>  Best Bets Of The Week . by Mark Hellinger [1903  -1947,  syndicated
>>  columnist, producer, etc.]
>>  Odds And Ends In The Entertainment World:  When you click in Hollywood, the
>>  moola really rolls in. Just about a year ago Deanna Durbin was earning $150
>>  a week. Today, while making "Mad About Music," she draws $2,500 weekly from
>>  the studio, earns a heavy sum from broadcasting and records, and is picking
>>  up in the neighborhood of $100.000 a year from fashion work. Nice work if
>>  you can get it...
>>
>>  Stephen Goranson
>>  http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>>
>>
>>
>>http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3BEnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pQIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=2812,5114669&dq=moola&hl=en
>>
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>
>
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