Department of Linguistics
A NATIONAL BULLETIN ON ISSUES IN
AUSTRALIAN STYLE AND ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
| Volume 16 No 2 | December 2009 |
PoulticeA version of this article was first published in Campus Review (13.11.06).. If you won a “poultice” on Shocking in this year’s Melbourne Cup, you’ve probably been too busy spending to worry about how a term for a soothing medication came to mean “a large amount of money”. Horse-racing actually has a lot to do with it. Medical poultices are commonly applied to horses to relieve inflammation, and according to the Australian National Dictionary (AND) poultice was first used in its metaphorical sense for a large bet, typically on the horses. Given that the earliest citations in the AND are about people with inside knowledge putting money on a horse they’re confident of winning, it’s plausible that the financial stake was originally seen as a kind of security, massaging the chances of the horse winning, rather like the medical treatment. Our current broader meaning – along with another historical sense, “mortgage” – has obscured the word’s origins. It’s understandable why money has become associated with sustenance in colloquial terms such as dough and bread, but its healing properties are less well established. Adam Smith |