29 Jun
2019
29 Jun
'19
9:17 a.m.
On 6/29/19 3:39 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
You use nicknames for 2 denominations which most of us
foreigners
don't know -- I still don't know which is a "nickel" (which is a metal
to me) and which is a "dime" (which is a Swedish chocolate-covered
sweet bar, of which I'm very fond but can't eat because I'm
overweight).
There we share a culture with the British (e.g. "tanner", "quid",
"nicker", "guinea").
However,I'll also say that younger Americans are unfamiliar with older
US slang for various denominations. For example, "bit" = 12.5 cents
hails back to the Spanish custom of dividing the Real (milled
dollar--wonder how many young Spaniards know about that?) into eight
pieces, hence, "pieces of eight". So "two bits" is a quarter dollar
(our term "dollar" hails back to the Bohemian "Joachimsthaler").
Fin = 5 dollars, sawbuck = 10 dollars, double-sawbuck = 20 dollars, frog
= 50 dollars, C-note = 100 dollars...
--Chuck