Transcript of “Going to Dad for Folding Money or Stackola”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Ty. I’m calling from Nashville, Tennessee.
Hi, Ty in Nashville. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Ty.
So my question is, let’s set a scene here when I was like, let’s say 15 or 16, and I’m going to a movie or something like that. My father might pull out a $10 bill and say, here’s you some folding money. And to me, this was always different than just money, you know. Wasn’t going to save it. It was with the intention upon spending it, you know, go have some walking around money. And I was wondering if there was any kind of cool origin story to that, or if it was regional or, you know, where that might have come from as an expression.
Well, that was nice. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean, I think my thoughts are my whole family was raised in Tennessee and both of their parents were of the Depression era. And I was thinking maybe folding money was different than regular money. Like it was money that was meant to be spent. But as far as an origin goes, I’m not too sure.
Well, yeah, that’s part of it. I mean, he didn’t give you coins, right? He didn’t drop a bunch of quarters in your hands, right? No, it was never changed.
Right, right. I mean, it was literally folding money. He literally gave you bills. He, you know, we’re talking about the Benjamins here. So that’s pretty much it. He was giving you a $10 bill, which has historically been known by a lot of different terms like that involving folding. You can have folding dough, folding stuff. He might hand you what he calls folding matter or folding green or green folding or folding lettuce, which is green like money, and just plain old folding. It has to do literally with folding those dollar bills. Folding cabbage.
And interesting, I love that it applies to all these other ways that we talk about money. I feel like I never just say the term money. It’s always some sort of slang term, and all of it can be holding as long as it’s dollars, right?
Exactly.
And as Martha says, it’s the flip side of the other kind of money, which isn’t made out of paper. Actually, American money is made out of cloth, but acts like paper, where you can refer to it by its physical characteristics. So we talk about it as greenbacks because it’s green. But the other kind of money we could talk about is clink or jing or jingle or janglers. We could talk about either kind as stackola or stacking money. So we have all these ways of referring to what you physically can do with it, how you can pile it up or how it behaves when it’s in your hand or in your pockets.
Oh, I love that. I love stacking money, too. It’s very interesting.
Right. That suggests a lot, doesn’t it? You’ve got a meaningful amount of money. And it’s at least 100 years old, Ty, folding money. People have been talking about it as folding money for quite a while.
Oh, that is so cool. I didn’t realize there would be so much context around folding money.
Seriously, dude. And it sounds like it brings back some really nice memories for you as well.
Oh, absolutely. It has a kind of warm feeling just talking about it, you know, being 16 years old and having a couple bucks in your pocket, feeling flush with cash at a movie theater or a mall or something.
Yeah.
Thanks for calling Ty and sharing your memories. Appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you all so much. Y’all have an excellent day. Make some false money. Take care.
Call us and share your childhood memories. Make sure they have at least a little bit to do with language. That’d be nice.
