| 释义 |
macute|məˈkjuːt|
Also 8 maccuta, maccute, macoute, 8–9 macuta.
[ad. native African makuta.
The Rev. W. Holman Bentley, writing from the Congo Free State, informs us that makuta is the plural of *ekuta, and denotes a bundle of ten mats of palm-fibre, still used as currency north of the Congo near the French frontier. Elsewhere the word survives only as the name of the Angola ‘penny’ piece or its value. Mr. Bentley says that it is derived from a Congo verb kuta to tie, now obsolete, but preserved in the reversing form kutulula to untie (N.E.D.).]
At the beginning of the 18th c., said to be the name for one of the pieces of cloth used as money by the Negroes of the Congo. Subsequently used in the W. African trade as the name for a money of account (= 2000 cowries), and hence adopted by the Portuguese at Angola as a denomination in their local coinage (= 50 reis); the Sierra Leone Company also issued (1791–1805) pieces of 1, 2, 5 and 10 macutes, the silver macute being worth about 43/4d. sterling. The account given by Montesquieu (quot. 1748), and adopted by Mill and other English writers on political economy, appears to be based on misapprehension.
1704tr. Merolla's Voy. Congo in Churchill's Voy. I. 740 The current Coins here are the Maccuta's, being certain pieces of Straw-Cloth of about the largeness of a Sheet of Pastboard each. 1704tr. Acc. Gattina's Voy. Congo ibid. I. 620 There is but little Mony passes in that Country, but instead of it they buy and sell with Maccutes... The Maccutes are pieces of coarse Cotton Cloth..five Ells long, and cost 200 Reys the Piece. Ibid., Two thousand of them [Zimbis] are worth a Maccute. 1748Nugent tr. Montesquieu's Spirit Laws xxii. viii. (1752) 77 The negroes on the coast of Africa have a sign of value without money. It is a sign merely ideal... A certain commodity or merchandise is worth three macoutes; another six macoutes; another ten macoutes... The price is formed by a comparison of all merchandises with each other. They have therefore no particular money; but each kind of merchandise is money to the other. 1823Crabb Technol. Dict., Macuta. 1848J. S. Mill Pol. Econ. iii. vii. §1. |