I heard on the wireless a reference to the growing number of small political parties getting funds from short money. I’m afraid I let it slide past me as one of the many things about money that I don’t understand.

Short is an extremely productive element in English vocabulary. Shorthaul journeys preceded by decades the invention of aeroplanes. The unlikely-sounding shorthorn carrots have been with us since the 1830s. The lightweight Americans favour short hundredweights, which are only 100lb instead of the Imperial and godly 112lb; worse, their standard ton is consequently a short ton of 2,000lb, a long way off the metric tonne, to which British tons approximate. The short-order cook was employed from the latter part of the 19th century to prepare food quickly for customers in a (typically inexpensive) diner or restaurant.

Where I get lost is on the stock exchange. Short selling is to agree to sell someone stocks one does not possess at a named price with the hope that the market price for them will fall, allowing one to buy some and supply them at a profit when delivery is due. But a short squeeze comes about when the price of a stock continues to rise, so that investors who have sold short buy it in order to limit their losses, causing the price (and therefore also their losses) to rise further. Short Street is where people in financial difficulties are imagined as living. This used to be called Queer Street too, from the early 19th century until the changes in the meaning of queer made it impossible to use.

But Short money, I discover, immortalises the name of Edward Short (later Lord Glenamara, after a place near Ullswater), who was Lord President of the Council and wouldn’t have minded succeeding Harold Wilson as PM in 1976, but failed. Short money has since 1975 supported opposition parties, now at the rate of £22,853.25 for every seat won at the last general election, plus £45.64 for every 200 votes gained by the party. New parties complain that in the short term this leaves them short.