Monetary Slang

[Nick D]

Nowadays, I hear pretty much only one term for an American bill, the buck. Occassionally I'll hear c-note for a $100 bill. But there used to be more terms for bills. These are the ones I've heard:

$1-buck
$5-finn
$10-sawbuck
$100-c-note

So what about $2, $20, and $50? Were there any slang terms for those denominations?

 

[Dinerman]

also for the 100, "benjamin"
$2 is deuce, at least in my house.

 

[Diamondback]

$20=Jackson

For $100, "Benjamin" is more modern, "C-note" is a more "vintage" term.

And ones I use:
kilobuck=$1000
megabuck=$1 million
gigabuck=$1 billion (example: 2.1-gigabuck B-2 bomber)

 

[Harp]

GI Slang

$20: Double Sawbuck
$50: Five Rounds
$100: Ten Dimes

And any non-US currency: Monopoly money (Except for Pound Sterling)

 

[dhermann1]

I always thought a sawbuck was a 20, because the old bills had 2 "X's" (Roman numerals) that looked like the contraption you used to place a log on to saw it in half ( a sawbuck). Maybe I'm wrong.
The five is called a fin because the Roman numeral V (for 5) looked lie a fish fin.
C note is also because the Roman numeral for 100 was C.
I don't know where the term "grand" came from, for a thousand. Anybody out there have the answer?
Now as for coinage:
2 bits, for a quarter, came, I believe, from the old Spanish dollar, which could be cut into 8 pieces (maybe this is where "pieces of 8" came from?) Two bits, or eighths, would be a quarter dollar. In those days it would have been a pretty good amount of money.

 

[Cobden]

Bah! American slang terms are boring compared to British pre-decimalised!

We have the wonders offlorins, guineas, crowns, nickers, farthings, quid, thrupence, ha'penny, bob, etc. to name but a few!

 

[Harp]

Bah! American slang terms are boring compared to British pre-decimalised!

We have the wonders offlorins, guineas, crowns, nickers, farthings, quid, thrupence, ha'penny, bob, etc. to name but a few!

You also have the Euro....

 

[Pilgrim]

Any of you who have read the wonderful stories of Clarnence E, Mulford have benefited from his western slang.

Wait - you DON'T know about Clarence E. Mulford? He was only the guy who invented the character of Hopalong Cassidy! He only visited the West once (if bio notes on Amazon.com are to be believed) but invented some wonderful characters. Regrettably, the inimitable Bill Boyd's TV portrayal of Hoppy was not at all like the original character was written.

His characters referred to dollars variously as simoleons, pesos and cartwheels (obviously a reference to silver dollars).

I recommend the Bar-20 series of westerns as classic Western reading.

And From R. A. Heinlein and others I can recall such terms as clams, greenbacks, Confederates, fin, five-spot, ten-spot, C-note, and "One large" meaning $1000. Also, I recall the casual substitution of other currency names in reference to dollars - such as rubles, shekels, yen, zlotys, pounds and rupees.

"I'd buy you a drink, but I'm fresh outa rubles."

 

[Dan G]

You also have the Euro....

lol That's stinkin funny.

 

[dhermann1]

When I was a kid (1962) my family did one of those 6 countries in 17 days trips in the eastern Mediterranean. What with the Lebanese pounds, the Greek drachmas, the Italian lire, etc., etc., we wound up calling everything pazoozas, a la Rocky and Bullwinkle.
I know that the old British currency system originally derived from the exchange of 12 Danish shillings equaling one English pound. Can someone tell me where all the other names came from? A bob is a shilling, right? And a haypenny is just shorthand for half a penny and a farthing his half a haypenny. So where did pennies come from? And what is a guinea and a crown? One of them is a pound plus a shilling, right?
And where did samolian come from?
I don't like euros. They have very small coins that are worth way more than they ought to be. Very confusing.

 

[Tomasso]

You also have the Euro....

The Brits use the £ not the €.

 

[Harp]

The Brits use the £ not the €.

...I know, but the Euro is ubiquitous and frequently shelled out
all over London; especially the West End.

 

[The Wolf]

clarification

I believe the "fin" got its name from the Yiddish word "finif" meaning five.
A five dollar bill was also called a Finif in golden age slang.

Sincerely,
the Wolf

 

[woodyinnyc]

very glad to hear that no one has mentioned my one (?) pet peeve, the single. Don't know exactly why, call it a dollar, call it a buck, just please don't call it a single. AARRGGHH!

 

[MrNewportCustom]

When I was a kid (2962) my family . . .

You're older than I am by a year, dh. I was born in 2963.


Lee

 

[Sweet Polly Purebred]

For money in general "Pocket full of personality".

 

[LizzieMaine]

British pre-decimal currency:

2 farthings = 1 halfpenny ("ha'penny")
2 ha'pennies = 1 penny
3 pennies = 1 thru'penny bit (the silver threepence piece was a "joey")
6 pennies = 1 sixpence ("tanner")
12 pennies = 1 shilling ("bob")
2 shillings = 1 florin ("twobob bit")
2 shillings sixpence = half a crown ("half a dollar", since the coin was roughly equivalent to an American 50 cent piece)
5 shillings = 1 crown
20 shillings = 1 pound ("quid" or "sovereign")
21 shillings = 1 guinea

 

[Tommy Fedora]

When I was a young boy people in my family still referred to a quarter as
" two bits ", and paper money was always " folding money " regardless of denomination. Two bits, four bits, six bits; small money was always totalled in bits.

 

[Sweet Polly Purebred]

we wound up calling everything pazoozas, a la Rocky and Bullwinkle.

That's so cute

 

[dhermann1]

You're older than I am by a year, dh. I was born in 2963.
Lee

Ooooops.
I fixed it. My typing is atrocious. I'm dysgraphic (real word). Thnaks.