An interesting Danish word I learnt today is pung, which means purse, wallet, pouch or scrotum. It comes from the Old Norse word pungr (purse) [source], and appears in words like:
- punge = to pay (a large) sum of money
- pengepung = wallet, purse, budget, pockets, funding (“money-pouch”)
- pungdyr = marsupial (“pouch-animal”)
- pungdjævel = Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii)
- pungulv = Thylacine, Tasmanian tiger/wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus)
- pungbrok = hernia [source]
The word penge [ˈpʰɛŋə / ˈpʰɛŋŋ̩] means money, and was originally a plural of penning (coin), from the Old Danish pænning, Old Norse peningr (coin, penny, piece of property, article) [source], which was borrowed from the Old Saxon penning or the Old English penning/peniġ, from the Proto-Germanic *panningaz (coin) [source].
Some related expressions include:
- pengeafpresning = extortion, extraction
- pengekat = neck pouch
- pengepolitik = monetary policy
- pengeseddel = bill, banknote [source]
From the same root we get the English words penny and pence, the Irish word pingin (penny), the Dutch penning (medal, commemoration coin; money, cash), the German Pfennig (pfennig, penny), the Swedish words penning (coin, penny, money, cash), pengar (money) and peng (coin, money), and related words in other Germanic languages [source].
I carry my cash, cards and other bits and bobs in a wallet. How about you? If you use a pecunary receptacle, what do you call it, and what do you keep in it?
It is interesting that in the US, everyone calls the coin that is 1/100 of a dollar a “penny” but that’s not its name. It is officially a “cent”. I wonder why, since the US had all the British linguistic history behind them, they didn’t adopt “penny” as the actual name of this coin. What’s even more unusual is how the average person here almost always says “penny” even though the coin clearly says “one cent”. I might say that some item costs 50 “cents” but if I am holding the copper-colored piece of metal in my hand, I’d never say I had “one cent”. I would say I had a “penny”.
It’s like we just can’t make up our minds what to call this thing.