When is a nickel not a nickel?

When it’s a five dollar gold coin. Or something like that.

Do you ever wonder about the origins of words or sayings? I do. I find language and words fascinating. Not surprising, considering I’m an author. I recently had a character use a slang word, then I had to look it up to be sure it would have been in use during that character’s time period. Whew! Safe on that account!

My research led me to discover something interesting about the word, josh. As a verb, josh means to joke around, banter or mock, and at one time it was capitalized. Did you know there was an actual man named Josh behind that word? Maybe two men?

The most interesting (though disputed) story goes that a man named Josh Tatum, back in the mid to late 1800s, figured out a way to build his fortune based on change. A nickel, to be precise. Seems back then the US Liberty Head nickel didn’t have the word “cents” stamped on it. There was also a five dollar gold coin in circulation at the time, and the two looked somewhat alike. Josh and a friend figured out how to gold plate the nickels. He’d go into a store, buy something that cost five cents or less, and get $4.95 back. It took law enforcement awhile to catch up to him, but when he went to court, he wasn’t found guilty on the most serious of the charges. How can that be?

Mr. Tatum was a deaf-mute, so when he gave the clerks his doctored nickel and they gave him the wrong change, “it wasn’t his fault” because he didn’t misrepresent the coin since he never “said” it was a five dollar coin. Go figure! Needless to say, the government promptly stamped “cents” on the nickels from there on out so no one could “josh” the clerks into thinking five cents was five dollars.

The other Josh was an American humorist writing from about 1860. His name was actually Henry Wheeler Shaw, but he wrote under the pen name of Josh Billings. It seems Mr. Shaw was a prankster. In his second year in college, he was expelled for stealing the clapper from the school bell. Seems a bit extreme to me, but discipline was harsh and swift in those days. It didn’t hold Mr. Shaw back, for he went on to write a number of humorous books, using plenty of slang, odd spellings, and his own brand of wit. Maybe he does deserve the title of originator of the word.

What interesting word origin stories do you have?

*This post was originally published on September 9, 2020, on the first version of my website.