In ancient Rome, no one cared how many Teslas, McMansions or Rolexes you owned. Nope; wealth was measured in cattle, cattle, cattle!

(The bovine bourgeoisie was so status conscious that some Romans put bumper stickers on their inferior breeds of cattle reading, "My other cow is a Holstein.")

Thus, it's probably not surprising that the Latin word for cattle, "pecu," became a general term for private property of any kind. In fact, "pecu" still moos in many modern words involving moola: "pecuniary" (related to money), "impecunious" (having little money) and "peculate" (embezzle).

In case you're wondering, "speculate," meaning "to invest money," is unrelated to "pecu." It derives from the Latin verb "specere" (to look at, behold) because it involves envisioning future gains.

And, as peculiar as it may sound, "pecu" also gives us the word "peculiar." The Latin "peculiaris," derived from "pecu," meant "privately owned, special," and that's what "peculiar" denoted when it first appeared in English. The concept of "exclusive, distinctive, exceptional" morphed into its current definition of "different, strange, odd."

The first recorded use of "peculiar" to mean "unusual" came from a sentence in, appropriately enough, a peculiar book — "Topsell's Serpents," (presumably a "Topseller" when it was published in 1608): "The tongue of a serpent is peculiar; for ... it is also cloven at the tip."

Another English word that cashes in on cattle is "fee." It derives from the Germanic "fehu," which in turn comes from the Indo-European root — ta-da! — "peku-" (cattle), the source of the Latin "pecu."

But how did the Indo-European "peku-" become "fehu" in German? According to the linguistic scholar Jacob Grimm (yes, the same guy who wrote the fairy tales), the letter "p" in Latin-based English words often correlates with the letter "f" in Germanic-based English words.

Thus, just as we have the Latin/German pairs "pedal" and "foot," "pentagon" and "five," and "paternal" and "father," we have "pecu" and "fehu," which sounds like a Korean comedy team.

Soon, "feoh," which originally meant "cattle" in Old English, became "fee" in modern English, meaning "money paid for a service." The Germanic "fehu" is also the root of "fief" (land granted by a lord to his vassal) and "feudal" (relating to such land).

When you consider all the money-related words derived from "peku-," you might call this Indo-European root a "cattle"-lyst of capitalism — a true cash cow.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Daniel Quiceno M at Unsplash