The short stories of Damon Runyon feature a panoply of slang terms, most of which can be easily understood when taken within the context of the tale being told.
The exception to this rule is the range of colloquialisms used for US bills. Those Runyon employs are:
$1 - a buck, a bob
$2 - a deuce
$5 - a finnif, a fin, a pound note
$10 - a sawbuck, a saw
$20 - a double sawbuck, a double saw
$50 - half a yard, half a C (note)
$100 - a yard, a C (note)
$1000 - a grand, a G (note)
The etymology of most of these terms is easily found but I am curious to know the origin of ‘yard’, and also the provenance of ‘large’ which, according to my viewing of The Sopranos et al, seems to have ranged alongside ‘grand’ (and ‘K’) as an alternative to $1,000. I know the first use of ‘large’ dates from the 1970s and my guess is that the word refers to the size of the bill.
Furthermore, I would be interested to learn if any of these terms have survived into the 21st century and what, if any, new colloquialisms have emerged to replace them.
And I am not sure if this is wat you are looking for, but when my buddy throws a $1,000 wager on a football game he always tells his bookie to put a dime on the game.
Units of $100 = bills; if price = USD $300, then you would say, “That shit costs 3 bills?”
In terms of just general money (or hundreds), you would say, “I gotsa to get paid, so I can be bringing home the benjamins.”
Unites of $1 = bones; “How much was dinner?” “About 5 bones.”
Double sawbucks, yards, half-yards, and half-c’s are not very common anymore. You’ll hear the rest of the lingo all the time if you talk to a lot of bookies.
Oh, and lastly, my friend in New York has heard $20 bills called “yuppie food stamps.”
I thought that “large” to mean $1,000 came from “grand” (which was already popular), since “grande” means “large” in several languages, including Italian.
I’ve only heard “fin” actually used once. I was delivering pizza (this would have been about 20 years ago); it was about 13 dollars, the guy gave me a twenty and said “just give me a fin.” It took me a few seconds to go deep in my memory and dredge up the fact that a fin was five dollars.
And let’s not forget "bit"s, eight to the dollar. I remember going to San Francisco once with my grandfather when he had just become a senior citizen and could ride the cable cars for “two bits.” That would have been even earlier than the pizza incident.
This is an important point. Some words refer only to the physical note, while others refer to the amount. “Grand” is understood by virtually everyone to mean a thousand dollars, whether in check form, bags of nickels, or various combinations of currency.
Mentions “yard” as a synonym for “century, $100”, but doesn’t explain the derivation. Neither does the Online Etymology Dictionary, which dates the first attestation of this sense of “yard” to 1926.
Cecil occasionally lauds his questioners for remembering to include a double sawbuck in their letters (or rebukes them for forgetting), so that one’s still in semi-live use. It’s a bit affected, though, and most folks won’t use it.
If you’re wondering about the origin of “benjamin” for the $100 bill, it’s because that bill bears the image of Benjamin Franklin (the most famous President off the United States who was never President of the United States). You’ll also occasionally see a $10 referred to as a Hamilton, for the same reason, and money in general is sometimes referred to as “dead presidents”, or “pictures of dead presidents”.
In my experience, though, the most common terms in modern use are just the numbers. So you might say something like “I gave the cashier a twenty, and got a five and two ones in change”.
I wonder why that is? In Australia, when we decimalised in 1966 we lost a wealth of rich slang names for different denominations of coins (not notes so much, because coins were worth more then than now), and the decimal currency has had a few attempts at slang, but they never seem to stick. We’ve borrowed the American “buck”, but that means a dollar, and doesn’t refer to the $1 coin (same with “grand” for $1000 - we don’t have a $1000 note). “Two bob” survives for the 20c, but that’s a hangover from imperial currency. You occasionally hear “Redback” for a $20 note, but a lot of people wouldn’t know it. So yeah, everybody just uses boring ol’ numbers now.
I assume half-c’s would be fifties, and those are rarely encountered anyway. If you withdraw any amount from fifty to several hundred dollars, the cashier is likely to give you twenties and fives, or hundreds if it’s a large enough amount. Tens have also become noticeably rarer in circulation and seem to be on the verge of disappearing. It’s said this is due to the use of ATMs, that usually only dispense twenties, but I’ve only noticed this in the last few years, and ATMs have been ubiquitous for a lot longer than that.
I have (very rearely) heard referance to “a K note”, meaning $1000. Presumably some influence from the Metric system. It’s always been computer types who said it. But $1000 bills aren’t in circulation any more.
The other common slang terms are the names of the people (mostly Presidents) pictured on the bills. Referances to ‘Washingtons’, ‘Lincolns’ & ‘Jacksons’ are common. No doubt, those running in a richer crowd hear referances to ‘Grants’, ‘Harrisons’, maybe even ‘Chases’?
This is what I most commonly hear $100 referenced as also. (example: in waiterland, where I work, someone will say “You walkin’ with a bill tonight?” which means: “Are you leaving here with $100 cash tonight?”)
My WAG is that since a $100 note is the highest denomination of bill we have, if anything gets the distinction of being just a “bill” without further specification, it would have to be the 100.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that before, probably on a TV programme. Is a nickel in similar use for a $500 bet?
That’s a new one on me. Also, can you tell me where I can get dinner for $5?
Same here. We read of someone earning £40K per annum (or whatever) but nobody talks about a K note, probably because there isn’t one.
In passing, my own experiences tell me that UK banknote slang is rare. Maybe some Londoners are conversant with Cockney rhyming slang whereby a £10 note might be called an Ayrton (after Ayrton Senna) or a Paul McKenna. I can’t say whether or not these terms are in current use, even within earshot of Bow Bells.
For actual amounts of money, the only examples I can think of right now are a monkey (£500) and a pony (£25) which are still widely used on the racetrack. For example, I might walk up to a track layer and say to him “Five ponies, Black Silk” which means I am betting £25 on Black Silk at 5/1.