Dollar

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈdÉ’lÉ™/
• US enPR: dälʹər, IPA: /ˈdÉ‘lÉš/
• Canada sometimes US IPA: /dÉ”lÉš/
• Rhymes: -É’lÉ™(r)

Origin

Attested since about 1500, from early Dutch daler, daalder, from German Taler, Thaler ("dollar"), from Sankt Joachimsthaler, coins minted in the Saint Joachim valley (Tal is German for "valley").

Full definition of dollar

Noun

1. Official designation for currency in some parts of the world, including Canada, Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Its symbol is $.
2. (by extension) Money generally.
• Marcella Ridlen Ray, Changing and Unchanging Face of United States Civil SocietyTelevision, a favored source of news and information, pulls the largest share of advertising monies. In 1935, newspapers received 45 percent of the advertising dollar, magazines 8 percent, and radio 7 percent.
3. Colloquially in the United Kingdom, a quarter of a pound or one crown, historically minted as a coin of approximately the same size and composition as a then-contemporary dollar coin of the United States, and worth slightly more.
• 1990 October 28, Paul Simon, “Born at the Right Time”, The Rhythm of the Saints, Warner Bros.We like to go down to restaurant row
  Spend those euro-dollars
  All the way from Washington to Tokyo
• 2013-06-01, Towards the end of poverty, But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.
4. (attributive, historical) Imported from the United States, and paid for in U.S. dollars. (Note: distinguish "dollar wheat", North American farmers' slogan, meaning a market price of one dollar per bushel.)
• 1952 Brigadier Sir Harry Mackeson, House of Commons, London; Hansard vol 504 col 271, 22 July 1952:The restricted purchase of dollar tobacco will, we hope, have the effect of increasing the imports of Turkish and Grecian tobacco
• 1956 The Spectator Vol.197 p.342:For there are two luxury imports that lead all the others : dollar films and dollar tobacco.

Coordinate terms

Derived terms

• Australian dollar
• bet one’s bottom dollar
• BZD
• dollar diplomacy
• look like a million dollars
• petrodollar
• the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question
• top dollar
• US dollar