Quid, Cash or Tobacco

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you? My name is Lorena. I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

What’s going on?

I was enjoying your show one evening and it occurred to me that my little etymology game and discussions between my fiance and I, there’s a place for them. And one of the times that we were thinking about it was the word quid, British slang for, you know, the exchange. Oh, it’s five quid or however. And I always suspected it came from a Latin root, quid pro quo.

Okay. What made you think about this?

My stepdad is British, and so these terms come up, and you have to learn quickly and don’t ask questions why. They just are.

Right, yeah, because that dialect is so different that if you have to stop every single time you hear something different, you’re like, whoa, you’re just going to break the conversation, right, and never get anywhere.

Yeah, exactly, and just roll with it and don’t even, don’t look at him like he’s got five heads. It just is.

So quid for a British pound, you said you had a theory that it’s from Latin?

Yes. I imagined it just only because the only other time would be quid pro quo that I’ve heard that word.

Yeah. And do you understand what quid pro quo means, I guess?

Right. Exactly. The interchange, exchange, one for another.

Right. Yeah, so that word quid means, what is it, Martha thing?

Yeah, something, anything, or what. I always turn to my resident Latinist here on staff, Martha Barnette.

Yeah, yeah. Quid in Latin means something or anything. So quid pro quo is something for something.

Yeah. But you know, what’s funny is all of the lexical works that I have, dictionaries and reference works and books that specialize in Latin phrases that are in English, they all say specifically for quid referring to money, British money, its origin unknown. We’re not sure that that quid is the same as the one from Latin.

And there’s another little quirk there, which is there’s a quid that means a cut or a wad of tobacco that actually may be more likely as the source for the quid meaning money. Because if you imagine a wad of paper money, it looks kind of like a wad of tobacco. And that comes from Old English. That quid. It’s just a coincidence that it’s the same as the Latin quid.

But that’s also kind of like a big fat question mark, like a big glowing blinking red question mark on the dictionary page, if you could do that on a printed page. All we really know about that quid is that it may be related to cud. You know, you chew both of those.

Exactly. You can hear the phonetic similarities there, right?

Yeah, quid and cud. So, unfortunately, you’re getting what I famously call the orig-unk, origin unknown here, Lorena.

Boob. So, sad trombone, make that noise for yourself there.

Oh, that’s perfect. That’ll just continue in my imaginary game of I highly suspect.

All right. Well, Lorena, have fun down there. You call us again sometime with some more of those Briticisms, will you?

Yes, I’m sure I’ll have many more.

All right. Take care of yourself.

Thank you guys so much. Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Lorraine.

Bye-bye.

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