"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 05/01/18 (playing through the nose, to bleed someone dry)

I've been talking a lot about money, currency in recent days. And today I'm going to talk about an idiom that has everything to do with playing and money, and that's playing through the nose, which is a really curious expression when you think about it. Ans that's a really gristy, quite notorious tale attached to it. It suggests that folowing their invasion of Ireland in the ninth century, the Danes, as they were called in Ireland - we call them the Vikings - imposed heavy taxes on the Irish people. And we know this is true. They arrived in two very big fleet on the Boyne and the Liffey, scores of boats, and conquered quite a lot of territory. And they did indeed impose taxes. For the most part, the Vikings lived quite comfortable with the British, or the native, people. But their finantial penalties were often very, very hefty. Ans this was the case here, according to this story. Those who were unable or refuse to pay the tax - there were gold taxes, taxes on all sorts of metals - they were said to suffer the penalties of having their noses slit. Ansd that is said to be the origin of paying through the nose. Gorily colourful as it is, the chronology of the phrase just doesn't work, because  obviously this was in the ninth century, and the phrase didn'n begin to emerge until the 17th century and the gap is just too big. HAving said that, we are not entirely sure about the truth origin of the term, but there is another suggestion that is much more plausible, and it's based on 400 year-old-slang. We know that rhino was once a slang term for money, and the fanciful rhinocerical meant rich, possibly because rhinoceros horn was known as an aphrodisiac. And even though there were very, very few rhinos in the country, in fact - I think there were two in the 17th century, and they were seen as these strange and wondrous creatures - that is possibly a reason behind the term. Now, at the same time, rhino or rhinos is a Greek word for nose. We talk about rhinoplasty, for example. And to bleed was slang for loosing a lot of money, hence our expression to bleed someone dry. So, put all of that together, and since noses bleed, rhino was a nose, it was also a slang term for money, a victim could possibly be said to be paying through the nose. Very long, very convoluted story, but it does just about fit and, thankfully, it has nothing to do with the sitting of noses by the Vikings.