Temparature of money.....

[Andy Boz]

Why do people (particularly the edia) refer to a large sum of money as 'cool'? eg The Ferrari was a cool million quid.

Where does this come from, and is there a set amount that changes to cool from warm?

[Quizmonster]

The earliest use of this word in this way - rather surprisingly - dates back to the 1720s! There is no certainty as to its actual origin, but it is suggested that it involves a sum so relatively large that it needs to be counted carefully and accurately...ie coolly.

[THECORBYLOON]

Money is sometimes called "lolly," is there a  connexion?

[Ward-Minter]

maybe if money is "hot" it is stolen. If your assets are "frozen" it means you have over-spent or going bankrupt. Therfore cool is a happy medium????

[THECORBYLOON]

If my assets are frozen, I get out ma long johns......

[jno]

or even get in your long-johns TCL?

[bernardo]

This is to do with a branch of wave-particle duality theory (first discovered by Professor Madeupname at the University of South California, and further described by Professor Hu Hee at the Shanghai Institute of Microdialectics) in which internal heat energy is dissipated more rapidly from large amounts of money than from smaller ones.  This is caused by the gradual accumulation of quantitative changes leading eventually to a sudden qualitative change (there is a close correlation with the same pattern of societal changes in Marxist-Leninist theory).  The point at which money suddenly changes from "warm" to "cool" is �8537, which has come to be known as the M-H point or the Gullibility Limit.

[Marsh]

bernado, that was beautiful!  There are tears in my eyes from laughing.

[bricro]

"Cool" is just the "in" word for anything that is great,very good or outstanding. Young people use it all the time for things they like..

[Quizmonster]

Dear Bricro, as I said in my earlier response, 'cool' as a descriptor for large sums of money is 300 years old. It cannot, therefore, be that closely related to present-day youngsters' jargon!