agiotage: [19] Agiotage is the speculative buying and selling of stocks and shares. The term was borrowed from French, where it was based on agioter ‘speculate’, a verb formed from the noun agio ‘premium paid on currency exchanges’. English acquired agio in the 17th century (as with so many other banking and financial terms, directly from Italian – aggio). This Italian word is thought to be an alteration of a dialectal form lajjē, borrowed from medieval Greek allagion ‘exchange’. This in turn was based on Greek allagē ‘change’, which derived ultimately from állos ‘other’ (a word distantly related to English else). => else