Shenanigans with the escrow

We were having dinner tonight and my son mentioned the word ‘escrow’ which had come up at his work; my husband who is extremely well-read, loves crosswords and is interested in etymology, had never heard the word before and in fact thought it was an acronym.It wasn’t a word I had heard of often, but came across it in a detective book I was reading, all about financial shenanigans.

It was originally a French word, meaning s scroll or piece of paper,  and when you know the meaning of the word you can see how the derivation occurred. It no longer means a scroll as such but it does have a very particular meaning:

• it could be a contractual arrangement in which a third-party receives and disburses money or documents for the primary transacting parties; the disbursement would be dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacting parties
• or it could be an account established by a broker for holding funds on behalf of the broker’s principal or some other person until the consummation or termination of a transaction
• and on the other hand, it could be a trust account held in the borrower’s name to pay obligations such as property taxes and insurance premiums.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow

Now the word shenanigans… no-one seems to know where that comes from; the first thought is that it could be Irish Gaelic in origin, but no-one can say for certain… it appeared in the nineteenth century. Scéalta grinn is the Gaelic for jokes, cleasanna are tricks… but really nobody knows!