GeorgeWChilds, Skepticism is not only our middle name, it’s our first and last names as well. For some reason nobody believes this.
What I’d really like to see are dates and names of the newspapers that Wachtel found the phrase “Prime’s rate of interest” in. That would establish the use of the term in the early 19th century.
Note that it would **not **prove that it was the source of the term as used today. The apparent gap of non-use until the 20th century makes it all too likely that the phrase was independently reinvented from the obvious and widespread meaning of the term “prime.” Many famous phrases have antecedents in history but pop up again at a later time with no connection. (Search for the dozens of threads we’ve had on the origin of “the whole nine yards” as an example.)
I also think you’re misinterpreting my scrutiny of Wachtel. First, word histories are tricky things. If you are not an expert in how phrases move into the general speech - and few people are, even if they are experts in other aspects of history - then it is easy to jump to conclusions from a coincidental find. Second, books are often wrong, even when they are written by noted scholars to great acclaim. They can be - and are - wrong in enormous varieties of ways. I’ve seen personally dates, names, places, and numbers that are wrong. I’ve seen footnotes that have the wrong date or page number or author. I’ve found some that contain no reference at all to the matter in question. And that’s just factual information that can be proven or disproven. The actual written material can be wrong for a myriad of other reasons. (It’s the little bits of “good stuff” slipped in to make the text more enjoyable that are most subject to being wrong, BTW.) It’s an occupational hazard. Everything needs to be doublechecked for proper attribution. That’s all I’m doing. No disrespect is meant, and I’m sure that Wachtel had to apply similar scrutiny on the material he cited.
I’m hoping that samclem comes into this thread, because he really is an etymological expert. I’d like to see what he makes of this.
Even so, you are very welcome here and I thank you again for bringing some real meat to this conversation for us to chew on.