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FROM BENCH TO BANKRUPT

Your bank is a bench. Bankrupt is the bench broken.

The money-changer kept his coins on a real bench — banc in 9th c. Old High German, banca in Old Italian, banque, bank, bancă. And bankruptcy is that bench broken: banca rotta. Legend says the failed man's bench ended in pieces in the square; the dictionaries answer that the tale of shards is probably just a figure of speech.

See how the thread breaks

9th c.
banc, “bench”, in Old High German
1466
banqueroute, attested in French
6
dated forms, in six languages
The bench breaks on stage — a legend; see scene The blow.

How the word changes clothes at the border:

  • banca rotta Italian
  • banqueroute French
  • bankroet Dutch
  • bankrupt English
  • Bankrott German
  • bancrută Romanian

SCENE 2 OF 6 · THE ROOT

The bank is a bench

Before it guarded money, the bank sat people: the Germanic bench walked into Italian with the merchants, and Italian gave it a money sense.

1
Germanic root: *bankiz
9th c.
banc in Old High German
12
centuries from bench to bank

The German etymological dictionary (Pfeifer, via DWDS) takes Bank, “seat for several”, back to 9th c. Old High German — banc — with kin in Old English (benc, whence bench) and Old Norse (bekkr). All come from Proto-Germanic *bankiz. On the deeper origin the dictionary states plainly that it stays uncertain.

Italian took the word from Germanic: Treccani records banca as an old or regional variant of panca and banco — the bench. On a wooden bench likewise sat the supreme collegial magistracy of Venice, Modena and Sicily; hence the old senses of tribunal and recruiting table. Furniture had become an institution before it became money.

An old wooden bench with peeling paint
An old wooden bench — the direct descendant of banc. Photo: Evelyn Simak, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Old weather-worn wooden planks
Weather-worn planks; the wood of the bench before money. Photo: Gerald England, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

SCENE 3 OF 6 · THE CHANGER

The changer's table

Italian money got counted on a Germanic bench: banca becomes the changer's counter, then the word for “bank” across Europe.

  1. 15th c.

    DE Bank — the reborrowing

    German reborrows its own word from Italian (banco, banca: the money-changers' table, cf. Middle High German wehselbanc). The feminine gender settles in the 18th c. under French influence. (Pfeifer, via DWDS)

  2. 1466

    FR banqueroute

    French attests banqueroute in 1466, from It. banca rotta. (EWN)

  3. late 15th c.

    EN bank — “money-dealer's counter”

    English bank starts as the “money-dealer's counter or shop”, from Old Italian banca and French banque, on a Germanic path (Old High German bank, “bench, moneylender's table”). (Etymonline)

  4. 1620s

    EN bank — “institution”

    The sense of an institution for receiving and lending money arrives in the 1620s. (Etymonline)

  5. 18th c.

    RO bancă

    DEX: the money senses come from It. banca and Fr. banque (18th c.); the furniture senses arrive separately, from Fr. banc.

The money-changer and his wife, a painting by Quentin Matsys, 1514
The money-changer and his wife — Quentin Matsys, 1514. The money table descends from the bench. Photo: Quinten Metsys, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
A money-changer and his wife, a painting by Marinus van Reymerswaele
A money-changer and his wife — Marinus van Reymerswaele, 16th c. Photo: Marinus van Reymerswaele, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

SCENE 4 OF 6 · THE HINGE

The blow (a legend)

Here the story breaks in two: first the legend, told as legend, then the three verdicts of the dictionaries.

legend

They say a failed money-changer's bench ended in pieces, in front of the whole market. Hence, so the tale goes, the name: banca rotta, the broken bench.

An architectural capriccio by Canaletto: an imaginary square with a triumphal arch
An imaginary square, in a Canaletto capriccio — no source names the place; the scene illustrates, it does not document. Photo: Canaletto, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
A whole wooden bench in a garden
One whole bench, for contrast: legends need no evidence; dictionaries do. Photo: Acabashi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What the dictionaries answer

“probably figurative”

“Said to have been so called from an old custom of breaking the bench of bankrupts, but the allusion probably is figurative.”

pseudo-etymology

“The bench-breaking tale belongs in the realm of pseudo-etymology; the account is that of the jurist Domenico Azuni (1749–1827), 18th c.” (our translation)

The Dutch original

“moet naar het rijk der pseudo-etymologie verwezen worden … Domenico Azuni (1749-1827)”

rotto = bankrupt since the 1300s

“The word does not come from an (otherwise unattested) custom of breaking the bench; rotto already meant “bankrupt” in the early 14th c.” (our translation)

The Dutch original

“Het woord stamt niet van een (overigens niet overgeleverd) gebruik … de bank stuk te slaan … De betekenis 'platzak, failliet' voor rotto bestaat in het Italiaans al sedert het begin van de 14e eeuw.”

Oxford (OALD) backs the thread without naming any custom: bankrupt, mid-16th c., from It. banca rotta, “broken bench”.

SCENE 5 OF 6 · THE GAME

The word breaks in six

Six forms, six dictionaries, six dates. Below you lay them yourself, oldest first, in The broken chain.

01

banca rotta Italian

sense: early 14th c. · compound: mid-16th c.

EWN: the “bankrupt” sense of rotto exists since the early 14th c.; OALD: banca rotta, “broken bench”, mid-16th c.

The cover of an old etymological dictionary
An old etymological dictionary; Italian checks out in Treccani and EWN. Photo: Штейнберг О.Н., Wikimedia Commons, public domain

02

Bankrott German

money-Bank: 15th c. (reborrowed from Italian)

Pfeifer, via DWDS: money-Bank is reborrowed in the 15th c. from It. banco/banca.

A page from an old dictionary from 1788
An old dictionary from 1788; German checks out in Pfeifer, via DWDS. Photo: Kleoparta Sarafyan, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

03

banqueroute French

1466

EWN: “Ontleend aan Frans banqueroute [1466] < Italiaans banca rotta” (= borrowed from French < Italian).

An old French dictionary, open
An old French dictionary; the form checks out in EWN. Photo: Viktor Lazić, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

05

bankrupt English

noun 1530s · verb 1550s · adjective 1560s

Etymonline: noun 1530s; verb 1550s; adj. 1560s, from It. banca rotta.

The title page of an old English dictionary
An old English dictionary; English checks out in Etymonline. Photo: John Richard Clark Hall, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The broken chain

The whole chain (solved)

The chronological order, with dictionary dates — the same order the game asks for.

  1. banca rotta Italian — sense: early 14th c. · compound: mid-16th c.
  2. Bankrott German — money-Bank: 15th c. (reborrowed from Italian)
  3. banqueroute French — 1466
  4. bankroet Dutch — attestations 1524–1555
  5. bankrupt English — noun 1530s · verb 1550s · adjective 1560s
  6. bancrută Romanian — 18th c. (via French)

SCENE 6 OF 6 · HOME

The broken bench, in Romanian

DEX keeps the waters apart: furniture and money entered Romanian through different doors.

  1. bancă (money)

    From It. banca, Fr. banque (18th c.). Here too: a sări banca, to break the bank.

  2. bancă (furniture)

    The bench senses arrive separately, from Fr. banc.

  3. bancrută

    From Fr. banqueroute, itself from It. banca rotta.

  4. spartă

    Feminine of spart, -ă: “prefăcut în bucăți, în cioburi” — broken to pieces.

“your bank is still a bench — sit on it.”

What we leave out (and why)

  • No widening of the family: six forms stand dictionary-verified; further possible kin stay leads, not claims.
  • No square, no city, no year of the breaking is named: no source names any.
  • No guilds or canal-side banks: institutional history stays outside this edition.
  • No tie between “broke” and the broken bench: no verified scholarly source draws one.
  • The Dutch and English renderings in the other edition are ours; the originals sit one gesture away, with links.

Sources

Dictionaries first; figures beneath each one. The sources below document the forms and dates.

Dictionaries

Images and type

Type: Fraunces, Newsreader and Atkinson Hyperlegible, under the SIL Open Font Licence.