Dollar

This article is about the currency. For other uses of this word, see Dollar (disambiguation).

United States one-dollar bill

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Canadian one-dollar coin (Loonie)

One New Taiwan dollar

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Australian one-dollar coin

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500 old Zimbabwean dollars

The dollar (often represented by the dollar sign: "$") is the name of the official currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions.

History

The name Thaler (from thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley", cognate with "dale" in English) came from the German coin Guldengroschen ("great guilder", being of silver but equal in value to a gold guilder), minted from the silver from a rich mine at Joachimsthal - Jáchymov (St. Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia (then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic). The basis of "thaler" comes from Joachimsthaler. The name is historically related to the tolar in Slovenia (Slovenian tolar) and Bohemia, the daalder in the Netherlands and daler in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

The name "Spanish dollar" was used for a Spanish coin, the "real de a ocho" and later peso, worth eight reals (hence the nickname "pieces of eight"), which was widely circulated during the 18th century in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in Spanish territories in Asia, namely in the Philippines.The use of the Spanish dollar and the Maria Theresa thaler as legal tender for the early United States are the reasons for the name of the nation's currency. However, the word dollar was in use in the English language as slang or mis-pronunciation for the thaler for about 200 years before the American Revolution, with many quotes in the plays of Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. Spanish dollars were in circulation in the Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and were legal tender in Virginia.

The Dutch lion dollar circulated throughout the Middle East and was imitated in several German and Italian cities. It was also popular in the Dutch East Indies as well as in the Dutch New Netherlands Colony (New York). The lion dollar also circulated throughout the English colonies during the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries. Examples circulating in the colonies were usually fairly well worn so that the design was not fully distinguishable, thus they were sometimes referred to as "dog dollars."[1]

Coins known as dollars were also in use in Scotland during the 17th century, and there is a claim that the use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, began at the University of St Andrews. This explains the sum of 'Ten thousand dollars' mentioned in Macbeth (Act I, Scene II), although the real Macbeth upon whom the play was based lived in the 11th century, making the reference anachronistic.

In the early 19th century, a British five-shilling piece, or crown, was sometimes called a dollar, probably because its appearance was similar to the Spanish dollar. This expression appeared again in the 1940s, when U.S. troops came to the UK during World War II. At the time a U.S. dollar was worth about 5s., so some of the U.S. soldiers started calling it a dollar. Consequently, they called the half crown "half a dollar", and the expression caught on among some locals and could be heard into the 1960s.

In the early days of the United States, the dollar was a defined unit of trade equal to 412.5 grains (26.73 g) of 90% silver. Today the closest definition to a dollar comes from the United States code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2, "The Secretary [of the Treasury] shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $1.292929292 a fine troy ounce." However Federal Reserve banks are only prejudiced to deliver tax credits instead of money. The silver content of U.S. coinage was mostly removed in 1965 and the dollar essentially became a baseless free-floating fiat currency; though the U.S. Mint continues to make silver $1 bullion coins at this weight. It is believed that the original green color and other specific designs of a paper dollar were introduced by 2 Armenian brothers from Massachusetts who were Near-Eastern immigrants.

Synonyms and slang

• The word buck — possibly an abbreviation of buckskin or buckarooney, an intrinsic "currency" for trade with American Indians known since 1746 — has been recorded since 1856 and is widely used as a synonym for the dollars of many countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the United States.
• Greenback, a nickname originally applied to a 19th-century United States Demand Note, is now a common specific reference to the U.S. dollar. It is not used for coins or dollars of other countries, whose dollar bills are often not green.
• Dollar is a now-obsolete British slang term for five shillings.
• Simoleon is an old slang term from the late 1800s, of American origin.
• Clams have been used as slang for dollars as in, "That cost me twenty clams!".

Related names in modern currencies

• The tala is based on the Samoan pronunciation of the word "dollar". Likewise, the name of the smaller unit, seneiti, equates to "cent".
• The Slovenian tolar had the same origin as dollar, i.e. thaler.

National currencies called "dollar"

Some of these are called dollars in English, but by a different name in the native language of the country. See the navigational box below for a complete list.

The name has also been applied to the international dollar, a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has in the United States at a given point in time.

See also

• Dollar sign
• List of circulating currencies

Sources and references

• Etymonline (word history) for "buck" and Etymonline (word history) for "dollar"
• Thesaurus (synonyms)
• The Source: Slang Dictionary