What makes money ‘short’?
I heard on the wireless a reference to the growing number of small political parties getting funds from short money. I’m afraid I let it slide past me as one of the many things about money that I don’t understand. Short is an extremely productive element in English vocabulary. Shorthaul journeys preceded by decades the invention of aeroplanes. The unlikely-sounding shorthorn carrots have been with us since the 1830s. The lightweight Americans favour short hundredweights, which are only 100lb instead of the Imperial and godly 112lb; worse, their standard ton is consequently a short ton of 2,000lb, a long way off the metric tonne, to which British tons approximate. The
