banca

Around the year 1000, with Romance languages replacing Latin as the spoken tongues of territories formerly within the Roman Empire, the Late Latin word bancus, on loan from a Germanic language, yielded the Italian word banca.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Around the year 1000, with Romance languages replacing Latin as the spoken tongues of territories formerly within the Roman Empire, the Late Latin word bancus, on loan from a Germanic language, yielded the Italian word banca.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Every day, the money changers sat at their benches (called banca), coins piled high in front of them, shouting various exchange rates as currency ebbed and flowed.

David McWilliams: The Dollar's Denial 2008

A native "banca" is a "dug-out," a canoe hollowed out from the trunk of a tree.

Anting-Anting Stories And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos Sargent Kayme

Another thing which was unfortunate; that he could not know the nature of the man from whom he bought the "banca," any better than he could know the nature of the river, and so did not suspect that he was dealing with a "tulisane," to whom the little bag of money which the officer had shown when he had paid for the boat had looked like boundless wealth, to see which was to plan to possess.

Anting-Anting Stories And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos Sargent Kayme

"banca," for three dollars, a sum of money which would make a native rich.

Anting-Anting Stories And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos Sargent Kayme

And while banca at first referred strictly to the old money-changing workbench, it soon came to refer to something else: the place where money or valuables were “mounded,” “piled,” “raised up,” or simply “banked.”

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

While the Global English word bank finds its financial roots in Italy, whose banca descended from the Germanic north, English had its own related Germanic word, benc.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Within a few decades, English-speakers began to refer to the Italian idea of the banca or monte, anglicizing only the first, as bank.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

This time frame is central to our bank story: at the very historical moment that a Germanic root for a “workbench” was evolving into a banca in the Mediterranean, speakers of Old English were shaping the same root into the word benc, which was equally indispensable to their culture.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010