September 12, 2013 (Thursday)
I hear strange sounding names for money these days: $5 is a “nickel”, $10 is a “dime”, and $25 is a “quarter”. Maybe you have noticed these words in the dialogues. These uses of these terms are new to me.
Some old terms I’ve heard for a long time are dough, smackers, and simolians.
New to me are designations by the picture on the bills: A “Hamilton” is a $10 bill, a “Jackson” a $20 dollar bill, a “George” a $1 bill, and a “Benjamin” a $100 bill.
All these can be called, “Dead Presidents,” but neither Hamilton nor Franklin were such.
A “C-note” is a $100 bill, taken from the Roman Numeral for “100.”
A “Greenback” was created by Lincoln to finance the Civil War for the north; it was printed in black ink on the front and in green on the back. It still refers to a dollar bill.
Other terms are used for commonly used bills such as the above, coins and bills of higher value. (Click here for 50 slang terms for money). Evidently we never tire of slang.
Of course, cash is not used as much as it once was, and neither are checks. Taking their place are credit cards and debit cards, found in almost every billfold and purse in the land. I don’t know what the slang terms for these are, but they probably exist. Oh, yes, I remember now: “plastic.”