Almost everyone has heard the advice to avoid talking about money in social situations. Etiquette isn’t our specialty, but language is — and since discussions of money apparently have an impolite connotation, a number of different slang words, or euphemisms, have cropped up to fill the gap. Though the word “money” is not inherently vulgar, euphemisms stand in for concepts people are uncomfortable talking about directly. Here are some of the offbeat terms used over the years to refer to the cash in our pockets.
Cash IS king. “Cash” was coined in the 1590s as a derivation of a few Romance language words: the French caisse, Italian cassa, and Latin capsa, all of which mean “money box.” Originally, “cash” referred exclusively to an actual box that people kept their money in. By the 18th century, the term was more widely used in reference to money itself.
The colloquial term “moolah” popped up in the 1930s, as seen in the Daily News (New York). The origin is unclear, but some have speculated that it might have originated from the Spanish word for mule, mula, because it’s one of the spelling variants. “Moolah” sounds right at home in a New York gangster period film.
Bread is a familiar food, and the word “bread” was used to refer to food in general in Old English, so we know it’s long been a staple of people’s diets and acts as a barometer for the health and wealth of a society. The use of “bread” to mean “money” didn’t start until the 1940s, but using the word in a broader sense to represent one’s livelihood dates to the early 18th century.
Dough is the uncooked material of bread, so naturally, “dough” is another slang term for “money.” It comes out of a similar reference to survival necessities such as bread. People started using “dough” for “money” in the 1850s, and it became particularly popular in 20th-century jazz music. The song “The Lady Is a Tramp” from the Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms includes the line, “No dough? Hi ho!” in reference to traveling on a whim. In more recent music, hip-hop and rap artists Lil Wayne, Chief Keef, and Notorious B.I.G. have song titles that include “dough,” and the lyrics are about making money.
If someone has $10,000 in hand, you might say they have “10K.” This shorthand comes from the Greek kilo, which means 1,000 and is often used as a prefix in measurements (e.g., “kilogram,” “kilowatt”). But when it comes to money, the “K” always appears and is pronounced after the value, likely because “10K” is a representation of “10 thousand dollars,” in that order.
As a specifically American term for money, one “buck” usually references one U.S. dollar. However, the phrase “make a quick buck” can mean earning a larger, unspecified amount of money. (“Quick buck” also has a scammy connotation.) As it was first documented in 1856, “buck” could be a shortening of “buckskin,” which was a trading unit between North American Indigenous communities and frontiersmen. People used buckskin for making warm clothing.
The mollusk clam with two round shells of equal size, connected by a muscle, gives us another food-adjacent term for an American dollar. Many Native American tribes turned the clam shells into wampum — strings of beaded shells used for bartering. The Library of Congress notes that wampum was regarded as legal tender in New England from 1627 to 1661. Clamshells were considered to be legal tender as recently as 1933, when Californians used them to make up for a lack of available currency during the Great Depression.
In addition to its reputation as a food trend overtaken by hipsters, “kale” is a food-based slang term for money. Its use as “money” dates back to 1902, probably related to the fact that kale is green like American dollars. “Cabbage,” also in the leafy green vegetable family, similarly means “money,” and “long green” doesn’t mean green beans, but it falls under money slang as well.
As with many other turns of phrase that we can credit to the Bard, we have Shakespeare to thank for European currency sneaking its way into English money slang. A ducat is a gold coin formerly used for currency in many countries, but the word originated from “the name or effigy of Roger II of Sicily, Duke of Apulia, which first issued the coins (c. 1140).” The sum of 1,000 ducats is a major plot point in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, though modern audiences might remember the term better from the 1995 movie Clueless, in which the main character Cher narrates that a teacher “earns minor ducats for a thankless job.”
“Smack” has a long list of definitions across multiple parts of speech, including as an onomatopoeia for a sharp slap. But “smackers” or “smackeroos” are American dollars. “Smacker” entered the English language in the 1910s, likely from the sense of “smacking” some money into someone’s hand or down on a table. “Smackeroo” joined the slang fray in 1939.
Beginning in 1869, $100 bills were printed with a “C” in the upper corner, representing the Roman numeral for “100,” so the bills came to be known as “C-notes.” In 1914, the newly established Federal Reserve issued its first official $100 bill and changed the design, doing away with the “C,” though the name remains popular.
The slang term “Benjamins” refers to founding father and American statesman Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait has appeared on the $100 bill since 1914. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Benjamins” only developed as a slang word for money after appearing in the lyrics for the 1994 song “One More Chance” by the Notorious B.I.G.
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