15:15 Apr 4, 2006 |
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Serbo-Croat to English translations [PRO] Games / Video Games / Gaming / Casino | |||||||
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Summary of answers provided | ||||
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3 | broken bank |
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Discussion entries: 1 | |
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otvorena banka broken bank Explanation: samo pretpostavljam, nemam dovoljno konteksta da bih shvatila situaciju. :) "Bankrupt," too, is an interesting word. It comes from the 16th century Italian banca rotta, "broken bench" or "broken bank," two words that were closely connected, since banks started out as benches on which moneychangers sat in public squares or marketplaces. By the 16th century, however, banking had moved indoors to considerably more comfortable conditions and it is doubtful whether Samuel Johnson, the great 18th-century literary critic and compiler of the first English dictionary, was correct in asserting that the word went back to a time when insolvent moneychangers broke their benches. Most likely, a "broken bank" was simply a figure of speech, much as we speak of "breaking the bank" in English today. (An image that probably derives from the ceramic piggy banks that were smashed in order to empty them.) http://www.forward.com/issues/2001/01.08.03/arts5.html -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 8 hrs (2006-04-05 00:11:40 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- In fact, what had happened is that the casino at that time had a "bank" of gold francs at every table. When the coins ran out--a very infrequent event--the casino staged a grand ceremony in which a black cover was placed over the table, like a funeral shroud, and uniformed guards marched up with a supply of gold to christen a new table. The other bettors would, of course, be heartened by the pageantry and continue to gamble. http://www.joebobbriggs.com/vegasguy/vg20010807.html Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_who_broke_the_bank_at_M... |
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