Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Bankrupt
“Bankrupt” is from the Italian banca rotta, which mean “broken bench” or “broken counter.” The British adopted the phrase and anglicized it as “bankrupt.” The word bank is from the same Italian word, banco, meaning a bench, since merchants in Renaissance Italy once made deals to borrow and lend money working from benches or tables in public squares. These merchants dealing from their benches is the origin of our modern banks. If a money dealer ran out of money, his bench or table was broken in half to indicate that he was out of business. Ancient Florence was once one of the prominent commercial cities in the world, and a creditor’s practice of smashing the debt-delinquent merchant’s stall was probably cathartic as well as effective. (It’s not nearly as harsh as the creditor/debtor’s remedies centuries before the rise of Rome. In 600 BC, the Draconian code permitted creditors to dismember the body of their debtor.)
The Italian word banca also gives us “mountebank,” meaning a fraud. The word literally means “mount a bench,” from the Italian “montare” and “banca.” It’s based on the days when traveling quacks would hop up on a public platform in the middle of town and persuade the townsfolk to buy their quack cure-alls. It might seem like a character of the American old West, but the word and the idea are found as far back as 1606, when an Italian Renaissance mountebank was featured in Ben Johnson’s play “Volpone.”
Banca is the modern Italian word for bank and saltimbanco – “leap on a bench” – is a more-dynamic synonym for mountebank. It’s not to be confused with saltimbocca – “leap in the mouth” – a dish consisting of rolled pieces of veal and ham cooked with herbs.
