According to wiki ("short selling"):

Some theories hold that the practice was invented in 1609 by Dutch trader Isaac Le Maire, a big shareholder of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). In 1602, he invested about 85,000 guilders in the VOC. By 1609, the VOC still was not paying dividend, and Le Maire's ships on the Baltic routes were under constant threats of attack by English ships due to trading conflicts between the British and the VOC. Le Maire decided to sell his shares and sold even more than he had. The notables spoke of an outrageous act and this led to the first real stock exchange regulations: a ban on short selling. The ban was revoked a couple of years later.

Short selling has been a target of ire since at least the eighteenth century when England banned it outright. It was perceived as a magnifying effect in the violent downturn in the Dutch tulip market in the seventeenth century. In another well-referenced example, George Soros became notorious for "breaking the Bank of England" on Black Wednesday of 1992, when he sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds sterling.

The term "short" was in use from at least the mid-nineteenth century. It is commonly understood that "short" is used because the short seller is in a deficit position with his brokerage house. Jacob Little was known as The Great Bear of Wall Street who began shorting stocks in the United States in 1822.