moola

English edit

Unknown, attested since the 1920s. Suggested origins, none of which are accepted by mainstream lexicographers,^[1] include:

from Romani mol (“have value, be worth”)^[2]
from Irish moll óir (“heap of gold”)^[3] However, this is unlikely because of the difference in pronunciation.
from French moulin (“mill”)
from Chinook Jargon moola (“mill”)^[4]
from Sanskrit मूल (mūla, “capital, principal”)
coined by Chuck Green, a friend of Damon Runyon^[5]

moola (uncountable)

informal: money

Afrikaans: pitte pl, malie, blink
Chinese:
Mandarin: 金錢／金钱 (zh) (jīnqián), 鈔票／钞票 (zh) (chāopiào)
Dutch: poen (nl) m or n
Finnish: tuohi (fi), fyrkka (fi), hynä (fi), massi (fi)
French: blé (fr), oseille (fr), pognon (fr), thune (fr), moula (fr) f
Georgian: მაყუთი (maq̇uti)
German: Penunze (de) f
Italian: grana (it) f
Polish: mamona (pl) f
Portuguese: grana (pt)
Russian: капуста (ru) f (kapusta)
Spanish: lana (es) f, plata (es) f, pasta (es)
Swedish: deg (sv) c, stålar (sv) c pl, kosing (sv) c, para (sv) c, klöver (sv) c

^ Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed.
^ Henry Hitchings, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English →ISBN, page 323
^ Daniel Cassidy, The Secret Language of the Crossroads: How the Irish Invented Slang, AK Press, 2007, →ISBN
^ “Cayoosh”, in cayoosh.net‎^[1], 2011 November 19 (last accessed), archived from the original on 2011-08-05
^ Attribution attributed to Mario Pei by William Safire, 6/8/2003 "On Language" column in the New York Times.

moola (plural moolas)

moola (plural moolano)

Declension of moola

	masculine	feminine
predicative	moola	moola
nominative	moolu	moola
genitive	moolu^*)	moola^*) moolate
accusative	moola^*)	moola^*)
^) Stressed on the final vowel. ^) When part of a predicative phrase, the predicative case adjectives are followed by the clitics -ho* (m) and -te (f)

moola

Kazuhiro Kawachi (2007) A grammar of Sidaama (Sidamo), a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, page 144