Money For Old Rope Origin Meaning

Money for old rope is most likely to have originated in a similar manner to money for jam.

Money for old rope origin meaning. If you say that someone is getting money for old rope or money for jam you mean that they are getting money very easily and with very little effort. Good cash paid for rope which is not quite as young as it seems. Old rope had the same status. Rope was a fact of life and it was there to stay.

It has often been said that money for old rope is a nautical phrase referring to oakum i e. But the phrase is first recorded in the 1920s long after the heyday of wooden ships and with no nautical connotations. I had always believed that the fashion model s job was money for old rope. Money you get for doing something very easy.

To make money from old rope means to make money by selling something that has been used and ought to be worthless. Or put another way rope which is as old as the hills cunningly disguised as something else. The reference is to the ubiquity of jam in the soldiers diet and that it had little value. Loose fibre obtained by untwisting old rope used in caulking wooden ships.

In the middle ages the rope trade was big business. If you describe a payment as money for old rope you are emphasizing that it is earned very easily for very little effort. Several hundred years ago the term money for old rope used to mean literally that. His only responsibilities will be to keep the fences in order and to maintain the grass.

This term has a nautical history. Money you get for doing something very easy. The saying money for old rope is derived from days in the workhouse workers where given damaged and used rope to pick into strands which would then be re spun into new rope they would earn just enough money for a meal hence the saying money for old rope. The term old rope was probably chosen simply because it denotes something of little or no use hence of little or no value.

This was a british army expression from around wwi. This extends to profiting from knowledge or using skills that were learnt for another purpose.