Money slang

Posted by Smokey Stover on July 29, 2009 at 02:51

In Reply to: Money slang posted by Victoria S Dennis on July 28, 2009 at 20:48:

: : Correction to posting about money slang: A "pony" is £25, a "monkey" is £500.

: : Origins: brought back to the UK from India, where there was a pony on the 25 rupee note and a monkey on the 500 rupee note.

: Have you ever seen any such rupee notes, or a photograph of such notes? Or are you just repeating something you heard somewhere? Unless you have some evidence, this assertion is quite worthless. It sounds unlikely anyway, as the term "pony" at least dates from the 18th century, long before the British Raj. The best theory is that it derived from the Latin phrase "legem pone", which was used from the 16th century onwards to mean "payment, cash down" - see here: www.etymonline.com (VSD)

Victoria's suggestion, that is, "legem pone," would certainly explain "pony up," and better, in my view, than the usual explanations, such as the one in our Archives. On the other hand, perhaps the British "pony," based on "legem pone," was an intermediate stage in the evolution of "pony up."
SS