Morning crop

Maigret delivered a couple more interesting words this morning.

First, file covers made of bulle paper. Apparently a sort of rough brown paper, perhaps what we would call manilla. With bulle more usually being a bubble, with the same root as boule for ball. With bulle also being the seal, the ball, hanging off a papal decree, hence papal bull. From where I was reminded that I once used to conflate sceau for seal with seau for bucket, having, as a result, great difficulty with the idea of the Lord Keeper of the Buckets - le garde des sceaux. Perhaps I did not have a dictionary to hand at the time.

Nothing to do with bouleau which comes from somewhere quite different. See reference 1.

Second, coupure for bank note. With coupure more usually being a cut of some kind. Maybe to do with banks chopping up heaps of money into notes of fixed denominations. Fixed, small denominations being much more convenient in the market place. Whether or no, the connection of our term, bank note or note for short, to the object in question seems much clearer to me, probably being something to do with a promissory note issued by the Bank of England: 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand...' and all that stuff. But then, I am English.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/twittering.html.