What is the origin of the phrase "hundred-dollar word"?

Welcome to Fluther. I have never heard the expression, hundred dollar word. I have heard people talk about million dollar words or million dollar vocabulary. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?

Rudyard Kipling was said to make one hundred dollars per word. One day when a newspaper reporter gave him a one hundred dollar bill and asked for one of his words Kipling put the money in his pocket and said “thanks”.

I have heard of the ”$64,000 question” but not the hundred dollar word.

Welcome to Fluther.

Maybe it’s inflation.

In my youth anyone who routinely used words of more than three or four syllables was accused of using “five-dollar” words. That is, words that would be spoken by someone who had a college education, where indoctrination in a multi-syllabic vocabulary was one of the cultural imperatives of the genre. (Like that sentence, in other words.)

I have researched @flutherother‘s anecdote. I can find it repeated in many religious sources as the basis for sermons on the value of the word thanks. In the one literary source that I found, it quoted the amount at $5. I can only attribute the growth in the amount to inflation.

According to etymology sources, the phrase began with 4 bits, 50 cents, then moved on to $2 and upward from there. Source 1: Source 2: Source 3:

Reminds me of my younger son who came home in second grade after a lesson about compound words and said, “We learned more about those two pound words today.”

My first thought was Mark Twain – “Never use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

I can’t find a verifiable link to Twain, like finding the quote in one of his books. But the phrase is widely attributed to him.

And then there was Joyce who said, “Write as if each word cost you a shilling.”

@janbb… and then there was Marx (the comic, not the Communist). I’ll bet my life he said “hundred dollar word” more than once on his ‘old TV show.

I love Groucho!

My husband still refers to a fancy, inflated word as a “two-bit word.” Guess he picked up that expression when 25 cents would still buy you a loaf of bread or a quart of milk. Thanks to inflation, what was worth a quarter in the 1950s is supposedly worth $2.54 today; but I can’t get a loaf of bread for that.

I’ve never heard the expression “hundred-dollar word,” but I’d sure love to hear the speech of someone who rated that kind of hyperbole.

^^ William Buckley?

I think it was Groucho Marx.