Etymology for Actuaries A mostly serious article explaining the etymology of various terms in common use in the actuarial profession.  Published in the December 2000 issue of The Actuary (in a shortened version). Etymology for actuaries Being a superficial discourse on the history of some words of interest to the Actuarial Profession. Actuary No doubt you all know that this originally meant clerk (my, how times have changed).  It comes from the Latin for account keeper, deriving from actus "public business".  Interestingly, the Italian attuario derives from the English word, rather than directly from the Latin; the same is also true of the French actuaire.  Note the useful homonyms for embarrassed actuaries at noisy parties, "equerry" and "actor"; actuary and actor share common etymological stock, both tracing their origin to the Latin verb agere, to do, act.  The words "action" and "actual" also share that origin. Asset This started off as the Latin phrase ad satis, to sufficiency.  The term then migrated into the French assez, enough.  In sixteenth century English, this then became asset meaning sufficient money to pay off liabilities, an early intimation of asset-liability matching; one could thus argue that "enough assets to cover liabilities" is a gross tautology, etymologically speaking. Bank From the Italian banca, the Italians having "invented" the bank in 1472 with the first known bank, Monte Paschi di Siena.  The meaning had come into Italian from the old German word bank for bench, referring to the bench on which one sat while discussing loan arrangements and cashpoint charges.  Interesting to see the word bank disappear and reappear centuries later in another country. Boisson Distribution We need not discourse on the noted statistical properties of the Boisson distribution, whereby variability and volatility increase proportionally over time, from opening hours to last orders.  Less well known is the first recorded use of the word on November 12 1935 at 23.47 hours in Trafalgar Square, or the roots of the Boisson distribution on that occasion - believed to be ale, gin, port and crème de menthe in roughly equal proportions. Claptrap Clap comes from the Old English cleappe, a loud noise or blow.  Claptrap is the simple conjunction of clap and trap, first appearing in the 1720's to denote some theatrical trick or act employed by an actor to garner applause.  A word sometimes found in contentious debates on matters as diverse as . . . Control Cycle Emotional debate on the etymology of this much-loved term has stormed through many a smoke-filled saloon.  Assiduous research has managed to track down the ancient sanskrit word konnitrul sikle, denoting an interesting stew of eel and coconut shell. Disaster This started off in Latin as the conjunction of dis and astrum, star; belief in the influence of the stars and planets was such that a malign position of stars was thought to cause catastrophes.  From the Latin the word grew into the Italian disastro, then the French désastre before appearing in English in the late sixteenth century. Facoltative The Latin word facilis meant easy.  From this sense came the Latin facultas and then the early (13th century) French facolté, meaning the possibility or capacity to do something.  As well as giving facoltative meaning optional, the root has also provided the more common word faculty.  In Italian, facoltativo is the standard word for optional. Interest Not a very interesting story.  Interest started off as the third person singular of the verb interessere in Latin, meaning "it matters, it is important".  From this, it moved to interesse in the French language, meaning a concern in something; this meaning shifted after time to a legal claim on something.  The word travelled to England in the fifteenth century, where it was used in the sense of an advantageous relation or benefit; for example, as in "in the interests of a family".  The spelling interesse gradually moved to interest. The word took on the significance of money paid for the use of money in the sixteenth century. Martingale The "normal" meaning is a strap forming part of a horse's harness, with the function of keeping the horse's head looking down.  So what is the connection with a mathematical time series with a random nature, such that E[x(n+1)]=x(n)?  Etymologically, it is possible that there is no connection.  The word martingale was first used in a probability context in the field of gambling, where it denoted a system used for roulette when betting on 50/50 events (eg red/black).  With this system, the player doubled the bet after losing, and halved it after winning.   Casanova describes using a martingale playing roulette in the 1750's, relating how he used it win a fortune in one week, only to lose it all a few days later.  It is clear why the word martingale was borrowed from this gambling system to describe the more general random process.  It is still unclear where the system's name came from.  One source ascribes it to a Colonel Martingale of the Indian Army, but this may well be apocryphal.  The etymology of the equine martingale is (probably) from the French martelago, an inhabitant of the town Martigues in Provence.  The Petit Robert also traces the gambling sense of the word back to this town.  I would be most interested to hear from anyone with firmer ideas on the origin of the word (in its mathematical sense). Model The word for measure or standard in Latin was modulus; this had associated with it the diminutive modellus.  Whence came the old Italian modello meaning the mould for producing things.  The word drifted into French, modèle, in the sixteenth century, and then into English shortly afterwards in the sense of a small representation of some object.  Model came into use in a mathematical context in the early twentieth century, shortly after it had also been coined by the fashion industry.  How many actuaries, when asked what they do at parties, declare "I work in modelling"? Policy The Greek apódeixis, proof, gave the Latin apodissa, a receipt for money.  This became pòlizza in old Italian, a written document confirming the obligation to deliver a certain sum of money or quantity of goods to the counterparty.  French borrowed the word in the fourteenth century, turning it into police.  In the sixteenth century it started to be used to mean an insurance contract, in both France and Italy, and entered the English language with this sense at that time.  Note that there is no common etymology with the word "police" despite the similarity of the words (in fact they are identical in French); police comes from the Latin politia, the State (from the Greek pólis, city), which also gives us policy in the sense of strategy, and likewise gives us politics. Premium Derives from the Latin praemium for reward or booty.  This gave the English word premium to mean prize up until the seventeenth century, when it came into use as the sum of money to pay for insurance.  The probable evolution from prize to sum of money, which is certainly the way the word evolved in Italy, is the use of prize in the sense of explicit recognition for some act, from which it moved to the sense of explicit recognition of the value of something.  Thus "insurance premium" would have really meant a sum of money equivalent to the value of the insurance, showing that transparency regulations in the seventeenth century were perhaps not widespread! Scenario The Latin scena meant stage or scene, in a theatrical context.  This then became scena in Italian, still meaning either part of a dramatic production, or the platform on which it was performed.  This then gave the Italian word scenario meaning a particular landscape or setting indicated by some appropriately painted backdrop to the stage.  Scenario was then borrowed by English to denote exactly the same idea, and stayed in purely dramatic usage until the 1960s, when it started to be used in an abstract, figurative sense.  As you would imagine, it holds a common etymology with the word scenery. Stochastic One of those interesting words whose meaning has changed 180 degrees over its history (the classic example of such inversion being the word "nice").  The Greek word stóchos denoted target or aim, and from that came the meaning of guess.  Thus the adjective stochastikós meant conjectural, and the English word stochastic appearing in the seventeenth century had precisely this meaning.  The sense of conjecture gave way to the sense of randomness only in this century, being first used in that sense in German. Test The origin of this word is the Latin testum, a small clay pot.  This travelled into old French as test to become teste in 14th century English, by now denoting a small vessel used in alchemistry.  The word occurs in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Shakespeare still uses it in this chemical sense.  From being an instrument used in ascertaining the purity or otherwise of silver of gold, the word took on its current sense only in the eighteenth century.  The history of the word also explains why test-tubes are known as such, rather than plain old tubes!  Note that other "test" words - testify, intestate, testament, testicle - all come from a different root, the Latin testis meaning witness.