spondulicks

‘Spondulicks’ (also spelled ‘spondoolicks’ or ‘spondulix’) is a slang term for money, which I’m almost certain Delboy Trotter used more than once. It first emerged in the United States in the mid-19th century, where it quickly gained popularity, even appearing in a New York Times article in 1857. Its exact origins are unknown, but there are a couple of theories about its etymology.

The first one, and the most widely accepted, is that it comes from the Greek word ‘spondylos’, meaning vertebra or a type of shell. What do shells have to do with money? Well, they were often used as currency in ancient times, and even as late as the early 20th century in some regions. (I read this in a fab book called ‘Spirals in Time: The Secret and Curious Afterlife of Seashells’ by marine biologist Helen Scales – nice bit of nominative determinism there.)

Cowrie shells were among the most widely used shells for currency across various cultures and regions, including West and Central Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand and The Maldives. There’s even a cowrie shell called cypraea moneta or money cowrie. Why cowries? They’re hard and durable which makes them good for lots of handling, and they also come in relatively uniform sizes and shapes, so they’re easy to count and use as a standardised form of money. They’re also really pretty.

The second theory for ‘spondulicks’ is that it comes from the Latin word ‘spondere’, which means ‘to promise’ or ‘pledge’. This one’s less popular though.

When I asked ChatGPT for a list of slang words for money it gave me the usual suspects including ‘bucks’, ‘cash’, ‘dough’, ‘quid’ and ‘moolah’, but also some others I’ve never heard of. These included ‘cheddar’, ‘cabbage’, ‘simoleons’ and ‘bones’. Who knew?

Makes me laugh every single time.

serendipity

Despite being the title of a frankly terrible film starring Kate Beckinsale (sorry Kate, I love you and your Instagram feed), serendipity is a lovely word. It’s a noun (i.e. a person, place or thing) used to describe unexpectedly finding something nice (or John Cusack) when you weren’t looking for it. Serendipity as a word hasn’t actually been around all that long – it was coined in the middle of the 18th century by English writer and politician Horace Walpole (1717–1797) – his most famous work is probably The Castle of Otranto, the OG Gothic novel. Walpole used ‘serendipity’ in a letter to another Horace (Mann) to describe an unexpected discovery he’d made of a lost painting. He took the word from a Persian fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ (Serendip is an ancient name for Sri Lanka). In the story, our three princes are sent on a journey by their father to get some wisdom and experience before they inherit his throne. Along the way they encounter various challenges, lots of which they overcome with a knack for making fortunate discoveries through chance occurrences – AKA serendipity.

There are lots of famous examples of serendipity throughout history, many of which have had a pretty major effect on us humans. Here are a few of them:

• in 1928, Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after noticing that a particular mould stopped the growth of bacteria in a petri dish – without that we wouldn’t have one of the world’s most widely used antibiotics

• 3M employee Spencer Silver tried to create a strong adhesive in 1968 but failed, ending up with a barely sticky one instead. A few years later, his colleague Arthur Fry used it to create Post-it Notes, now the bane of many an office worker’s life

• in the 1930s, a chef called Ruth Wakefield was making chocolate cookies and ran out of baker’s chocolate. She added broken pieces of Nestle chocolate instead, thinking it would melt and spread. Instead, she created the world’s first chocolate chip cookies. Well done, Ruth

• in 1945 an engineer called Percy Spencer was working on radar equipment when he noticed that the emissions from it melted a chocolate bar in his pocket. This discovery eventually led to the invention of the microwave oven

• in the 90s, Pfizer developed a new medication for angina. But researchers noticed it had an unexpected side effect… erections! Men (and women) all over the world rejoiced as this serendipitous event led to Viagra.

There have been a couple of attempts to come up with an antonym (i.e. an opposite) for serendipity. A Scottish novelist called William Boyd coined the term ‘zemblanity’ in the late 20th century to mean ‘making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design’. No one’s entirely sure what the etymology was, but it’s possibly from Nova Zembla, a corruption of ‘Novaya Zemlya’, a barren archipelago that was once the site of Russian nuclear testing. So that’s cheery. I should’ve stopped at Viagra.