Big Bucks

In the 'Know your English' section of the newspaper, I read recently a nice thing. I am hoping that most of you will be as unaware of this fact and hence will be interested.

Why is money referred to as 'bucks'?

"There was a time when the term bucks was only used to refer to the American dollar. Nowadays, the word is used to refer to money in general. The invention of paper money is a recent phenomenon. In the old days, when people wanted to buy something, they ususally traded or bartered what they had. When a hunter wanted grain from a farmer, he usually traded animal skin or dried meat for it.
The term 'buck' is actually the short form of 'buckskin'. A buck, as you know, is a male deer; 'buckskin' therefore is the skin of this deer. Hunters, when they did business made use of 'buckskins'. Later on, with the passage of time, the word 'buckskin' in everyday conversation was shortened to 'buck'. When paper money was introduced much later, people continued to call it 'buck'."

I thought, it was a nice and interesting piece of news. What are the other interesting things we can use as money these days? As Kids, of course, we valued marbles, match boxes, soda bottle caps, smooth pebbles etc. as money - in fact, more valuable than money. In the college, I have read in the Economics book how cigarettes were used by priosoners in a big jail like money.


Instead of the green, blue and red sheets of paper, more interesting things like this will be nice. But, I guess, these days we don't have to see even the money. It is just some digital numbers in the computer screen or in email attachments from the bank?

On another note, why is Gandhi punished by printing his face in all the Indian rupees? What is the logic and rationale for putting the Father of our Nation on our currency?