Slang terms for world currency often find their roots in the appearance or the shape of the money. Within a single currency community, the potential slang terms can be incredibly numerous and varied leading to some interesting commentary on the social and political situations around the world. If currency rates in the world don’t favour a specific currency, then that currency may gain a less than flattering slang term; it’s that simple. Why we use slang in the first place is a topic on itself altogether.
Slang Relating to Importance
Often world currency and money conversion is unrelated to the slang terms but it can have an effect on how much affection is shown toward the currency in question. The general slang for currency often relates to the importance of money in general. Bread, dough, milk and paper are all slang terms for money that relate to the value; the dietary terms are self-explanatory but paper comes from a time that paper was quite valuable (also money is often printed on paper). Then there is the social commentary motivated slang terms, coin, folding stuff, lolly, moolah and shrapnel; shrapnel is used to describe a large amount of money that has very little value such as a sack of cents).
Australian Currency
Every monetary currency of the world has at least one slang term for it. Australian money often gets its slang from the appearance of the currency. A five-dollar is known as a ‘fiver’ or ‘queenie’ because of the portrait of the Queen on it, similarly the ten-dollar is a ‘tenner’ or ‘blue-tongue’. A twenty-dollar note is known as a ‘lobster’ because it is mostly red, a fifty-dollar is a ‘pineapple’ for being yellow, and a one-hundred dollar note is known as a ‘watermelon.’
American Currency
In America the slang for their world currency exchange has more to do with the value of the item than shape. Quite simply five dollars become ‘fivers’ or a ‘five-spot’ and so on. The ten dollar can also be called a ‘sawbuck’ because of the shape of a sawbuck or sawhorse which have crossed legs resembling ‘X;’ X is the Roman numeral for 10 and that is that. A ‘G’ or grand refers to $1000 and is perhaps the most widely used form of currency slang in the world, every monetary currency of the world that can be denominated into a thousand can be referred to as a ‘G.’
The Rhino
In Britain available cash has been known to currency world-wide as ‘rhino’ but not for the reasons you’d think. The term ‘paying through the nose’ is where this slang has its roots in that rhino- is a Greek prefix for nose. So rhino money is nose money as in paying through the nose. The rich and varied vocabulary we come up with for our cash truly means that there is no world currency safe from a slang term. Where language is concerned, slang will always exist and we name our currency often.
Eugene Calvini is a writer and enthusiast of money; with the humble beginnings of a MT4 demo he is now among many effective forex trading brokers who strive for full understanding of currency.
Related posts:
Posted in 
