| 词源 |
pecuniary. Pecu is the Latin for cattle, and since cattle were once a common means of barter, the ancients often expressed an estate’s value in terms of the number of cattle it was valued at, which gave them the word pecunia, for “money or property.” Pecunia, in turn gave birth to numerous English words, such as pecuniary, “pertaining to money”; impecunious, “without mon- ey”; peculate, “to embezzle”; and peculiar, “pertaining to that which is one’s own,” that is, one’s own cattle. |