The Hindu Business Line : `We come within our awful banks again'

A FOUR-LETTER word of current interest is `bank'. Original civilisations flourished on riverbanks — that is, "land alongside or sloping down" the waterfront. Now, banks — that is, financial establishments — flourish on the wealth of the population by getting deposits and giving loans. Banks are of all sizes and forms, small and big, private and public, sound and unsound, strong and weak.

"We come within our awful banks again and knit our powers to the arm of peace," sounds appropriate in the context of stormy bank meetings, but that is from Shakespeare's King Henry IV.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary informs that words bank and bench are related to each other; so there is no oddity if some bank directors are on the bench rather than at the table in the boardroom. Bench, as we know, is where substitute players of a sports team sit; and centuries ago moneylenders too used benches to carry on their business. "Bank meaning financial organisation entered English in the fifteenth century from French banque or Italian banca, from medieval Latin banca `bench'," explains the dictionary.

There is a reference to bank in the New Testament too: "Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?" If that goes above your head, Bob Hope has a simple definition: "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." Woody Allen is greedier: "If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank."

Bank means many other things too. Transverse slope on road, railway or sports track "to maintain speed round a curve" is bank, so it would be too idealistic to expect banks to traverse only through straight and even tracks.

Aircraft banks when turning in flight, though there is no slope on its track. "A fundamental aircraft motion is a banking turn," explains Glenn Research Centre of NASA. "The turn is initiated by using the ailerons or spoilers to roll, or bank, the aircraft to one side."

As long as the aircraft is banked, the side force is a constant, it adds, and I guess that as long as bank fights are in the air, our tension is also constant. Set of similar things grouped together in rows is also a bank, as in bank of lights. Therefore, when you see a line of bank branches clustering on busy roads, that is a bank of banks, though such a privileged name should rather belong to the country's central bank.

"Come daily to the banks," is a line from Shakespeare's Sonnets that may sound like an invitation. "A bank for love to lie and play on," The Winter's Tale would again entice. However, to bank is also to act as the banker in a game or in gambling, apart from meaning doing business with a bank or keeping an account at a bank.

When you bank a fire, you cover it with ashes so as to control the rate of burning, but when there is a `run' on the bank, the problem is worth than a bank on fire.

Bank is not only for money, but also for anything kept in reserve, such as data or blood bank. Can we bank on banks? That is a tricky question because to `bank on' is to rely on confidently. Should we then break the bank? No don't!

The usage means costing more than one can afford, as when you mutely witness a spouse's shopping spree only breaking the bank. Break the Bank was a popular TV game show in the 1970s where a player had to find three moneybags scattered throughout the board.

Banking is the business conducted by a bank, though you may hear it at times pronounced as `banging'.

There are different types of banking, such as personal, commercial, investment, social, core and so on. Banker runs the bank, but employees in a bank are usually not called bankers but simply bank staff. Bonkers, an adjective meaning mad or crazy, so it is not improbable that bankers go bonkers. Banksman is not the same; he instructs the driver of a crane or reversing vehicle.

When bank employees go on strike for higher pay, even as savings bank interest rates have reached the abyss, customers wonder if the bank is only reversing. Bank rate is what the central banker announces, and if there is somebody to bankroll, that is, support financially, you can launch onto any enterprise.

What is banksia? A form of amnesia that bankers suffer from? No, it is an evergreen Australian shrub with flowers resembling bottlebrushes, named after the English botanist Sir Joseph Banks.

Don't ask what is Banka, but where? It is an island in western Indonesia forming part of the Malay Archipelago, and is also called Bangka. Even as banks such as Federal Bank become places of wild happenings, the popular destination Bangkok shares no origin with banks; it translates as `village of wild plums', though Thais know the city by its original name Krung Thep, the `City of Angels'.

Banks are not barns but for some queer reason `bank barn' means a two-story barn built into a hillside that has an entrance to the first story at the front and an entrance to the second story at the back! Useful when an AGM runs out of control.

A bankrupt is somebody who has been declared legally unable to pay his or her outstanding debts; bankruptcy law is a protection lest creditors chase the debtor. Bankrupt also means ``completely lacking in a particular quality, especially in good or ethical qualities,'' as for example, a city that is `morally bankrupt', or a company that is bankrupt on corporate governance.

The word is from Italian banca rotta, literally `broken table', explains Encarta. It seems that when a moneylender became bankrupt in those good old days, the affected people would break his bench, perhaps in addition to breaking a few bones.

On `bankrupt' there is a rich harvest from Shakespeare. "Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits," is a Longaville line from Love's Labour's Lost. "The king's grown bankrupt, like a broken man," is what Lord Willoughby would say in King Richard II. In his Sonnets, the Bard questions: "Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?" In The Merchant of Venice, to Bassanio's query, "Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?" Shylock replies: "To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there."

A Midsummer Night's Dream has Demetrius pose a teaser: "So sorrow's heaviness doth heavier grow for debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe." Hear the lament of Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors: "Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he's worth, to season." Or that of Juliet: "O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!"

More than money that banks safeguard, what is invisibly banked in them is also lot of public trust, if only they care to remember.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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