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Word of the Day: Pony up
It’s Friday again—time to pony up.
These days most people earn a monthly salary, but I remember when I was paid weekly on a Friday.
For this reason, I thought Friday would be the perfect day to talk about paying what you owe or, in other words, to pony up.
Pony up is slang and not often used in formal situations.
It is used quite often in North America though in daily conversation.
When a person borrows money from a friend, eventually, the day will come when they have to pay it back.
Anyone worth their salt will pay debts to their friends on time.
The thing to remember is that pony up means to pay money.
In the past, we could only use cash to pay, but now we can use apps such as Venmo or PayPal to pay friends money that we owe them.
Keep in mind, though, that if you get into trouble with illegal activity and owe money to anyone operating an unlawful business, you’ll have to pony up in cash.
Drug dealers don’t accept PayPal or Venmo.
So, how the heck did pony up take on the meaning of paying money?
Well, first off, we should go back to the old standby Latin.
I know some of my students tell me they ‘don’t need to learn Latin.’
It doesn’t matter what you ‘need’ to do.
By learning English, you’re going to pick up some Latin anyway.
It’s everywhere.
Anyway, the Latin phrase legem pone, from the Christian bible, could be the origin of pony up.
It comes from Psalm 119, which was sung on the 25 of the month.
Coincidentally, March 25th was the day when the British paid their debts for the first quarter of the year.
Pone sounds like a pony.
It could be the origin, or maybe not.
No one knows for sure.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 79.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.