gold

Old English gold comes from Proto-Germanic *gulþą, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃- (to shine, to be yellow). The same root produced German Gold, Dutch goud, and Swedish guld. The PIE root also connects to 'yellow,' 'glow,' and possibly 'chlorine' (from Greek khlōrós, 'pale green,' from the same color family). Gold was named for what it looked like — the yellow, shining thing. The value came later. The color came first.

Gold has been worked by humans since at least 4600 BCE — a gold artifact from the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria is among the oldest known. The metal is chemically inert (it does not corrode or tarnish), malleable (a single ounce can be beaten into a sheet covering 100 square feet), and rare enough to be precious but common enough to be found on every continent. These physical properties made it the universal standard of value. Gold did not become money because people agreed on its value. People agreed on its value because gold's properties made it uniquely suited to be money.

The gold standard — backing a currency with a fixed amount of gold — dominated international finance from roughly 1870 to 1971. Richard Nixon ended the US dollar's convertibility to gold on August 15, 1971. The word 'gold standard' immediately became a metaphor. The gold standard of healthcare, the gold standard of testing, the gold standard of evidence. The monetary meaning disappeared. The metaphorical meaning — the best possible version — took its place.

Gold is element 79, symbol Au (from Latin aurum, from a different root meaning 'to glow'). The Latin word gave English 'aureate,' 'auriferous,' and 'El Dorado' (the golden one). English has two complete vocabularies for the same metal: Germanic 'gold' and Latin 'aurum.' The dual vocabulary is itself golden — an embarrassment of riches in a language that hoards words the way dragons hoard treasure.