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'ask' is a noun in finance because 'bid-ask' is one of the most commonly used noun pairs to represent both sides of the market. As for why it's not 'bid-request
by smallnamespace 8y ago
'ask' is a noun in finance because 'bid-ask' is one of the most commonly used noun pairs to represent both sides of the market. As for why it's not 'bid-request', probably because request has an extra syllable—one too many for trading pit jargon.
I'd wager that a lot of unusual vocabulary uses come from jargon where the requirements are different. There's plenty of that in software engineering too:
1. You 'ls' a directory, not 'list' it
2. 'Ack' packets instead of 'acknowledgement'
3. 'Build' as a noun instead of a more idiomatic gerund like 'building', presumably since it would get confused with the more common 'building' as a structure.
4. 'malloc' instead of 'memory allocation', 'googling' instead of 'searching', 'ripping' (an MP3) instead of 'transcoding'
We just don't notice it because the jargon has become invisible through repeated use.
- Bartweiss 8y agoIt seems like 'ask' in the financial sense is subtly different from 'request', also. A request is commonly something you make to someone, which doesn't apply to the case of offering a sale to an open market. An ask is the thing for which you set your 'asking price', so it's almost closer to a challenge than a request - "I'll reward whoever hits price X with a share of stock". And that subtly different meaning seems to carry over to 'ask' as a common noun. You wouldn't say "the Lunar X Prize was a huge request" because it wasn't requested of any specific group, but you might say "the Lunar X Prize was a huge ask", meaning "whoever tried to meet this bar had a very hard task".