spondulicks [spon-doo-liks ]
noun:
1 (archaic) fractional currency
2 (slang) money, funds
Examples:
And, by hook or by crook they’ll find the spondulicks to pay the fees, convinced that the grind school will pave the way for the brat’s entry into Third Level. (OPINION: Great for some to be able to afford grind schools, The Southern Star, October 2019)
But now the world’s most hedonistic island has come to me. Or rather, a key element of it has: the legendary boutique called Annie’s Ibiza, where clubbers who are generously endowed with both self-confidence and spondulicks go to get dressed. (Anna Murphy, The day Ibiza style queen Annie Doble gave me a makeover, The Sunday Times, January 2021)
Suppose I can't raise the spondulicks in time for the ten train! (Nell Speed, Molly Brown's Orchard Home)
"I ain't as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and slam money around the way he does; but I've told him many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him; for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if I'D live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I -" Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn)
Origin:
1856, American English slang, 'money, cash', of unknown origin, said to be from Greek spondylikos, from spondylos, a seashell used as currency (the Greek word means literally 'vertebra'). Used by Mark Twain and by O Henry and since then adopted into British English, where it survived after having faded in the US. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
It would seem from the evidence that spondulicks (either so spelled or as spondulix) was originally American college slang. One of its earliest appearances was in a piece about college life in the New York magazine Vanity Fair in 1860: 'My friend the Senior got out of spondulix, and borrowed [my watch] to spout for the purpose of bucking the Tiger' (to interpret, his friend had run out of money and pawned the watch to get some more cash in order to gamble on cards, probably faro). The word was used later by such literary luminaries as O Henry and Bret Harte. From usage data, it now looks to be much more common outside the US, to the extent that the New Oxford Dictionary of English marks it as 'British slang'.
Where does it come from? 'A fanciful coinage', the Oxford English Dictionary says. It has been described as a 'perverted and elaborated' form of greenback (you may feel that to believe spondulicks could come from greenback requires a perverted imagination all its own). Eric Partridge suggests that it might derive from Greek spondulikos, from spondulos, a species of shell once used as money.
However, Doug Wilson pointed out that that Greek stem is also the source of various English words beginning in spondylo- that refer to the spine or vertebrae. He suggested that a stack of coins may have been likened to the spine, with each coin a vertebra. He found a supporting reference in an 1867 book, A Manual of the Art of Prose Composition: for the Use of Colleges and Schools, by John Mitchell Bonnell. A list of provincialisms included: 'Spondulics - coin piled for counting'.
If it is indeed college slang, either explanation may well be the kind of academic joke that would appeal. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine. (World Wide Words)