1452: shekel Dec 2, 2018

As discussed yesterday, terms for money often outlast—at least in an etymological way—economic systems. In addition to 'capital' and 'buck' which both came from terms for animals, 'shekel', the modern currency of Israel and historically other Middle Eastern nations also comes from farming. In this case however, it is from a unit of barley, though 'shekel' comes from the Hebrew 'šeqel' whose root means ‘weigh’. These sorts of agricultural terms do have a specific biological necessity and therefore value, so when moving to coinage and paper money—which does not have a definite value—the notion similar valuation stuck.

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