Impecunious
Merriam Webster’s definition: having very little or no money usually habitually : PENNILESS
This is a fun word to say…something about the combination of sounds…the ‘p’ followed by the hard ‘c’, and then the ‘yoo’ sound. Anyway, it’s a nice word. A fancy way of saying “poor”.
The reason I mention it here is that it (and its related words in English—pecuniary, pecunious, peculate, even the word peculiar), has an interesting origin. The word is traced directly to Latin, in the form of the word pecunia, which simply means “money”. That doesn’t sound like much of a leap, or a very interesting story, until you look at the history of pecunia in Latin.
Pecunia is closely related to the Latin noun pecus. Here is a definition provided by Wiktionary:
pecus f (genitive pecudis); third declension
- A single herd animal, especially a head of cattle, a horse.
- A single animal, a beast, especially smaller livestock or livestock taken generally.
- (derogatory) A mindless or violent person: a brute, an animal.
Latin speaking cultures in antiquity often used livestock as synonymous with property or wealth. Thus, the word for money developed out of the term for cattle.
Eventually, English gained some words as well from this bovine source. “Peculate” is a good one. Meaning “to embezzle or steal money”, I now think of it as somebody surreptitiously tucking a cow under their jacket and leaving by the back door!
