See also: rixdollar

English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from obsolete Dutch rijcksdaler (modern rijksdaalder), after early modern German Reichsthaler; compare riche, dollar.[1]

 
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

rix-dollar (plural rix-dollars)

  1. (now historical) A silver coin and money of account in use from the late-16th to the mid-19th centuries in the European Teutonic countries and their imperial trading networks.[1]
    • 1803, [Author Unknown], Medical Journal — Volume IX, page 539:
      At all other times they would receive the regular salary of thirty rix-dollars monthly.
    • 1999, Mike Mitchell, translating HJC von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, V.6, Dedalus 2016, p. 373:
      He sent for the celebrated necromancer who lived at the sign of the Goatskin and whose familiar spirit so plagued the thief that he returned the stolen goods to their rightful owner, for which the sorcerer was paid ten rix-dollars.
  2. (historical) A unit of currency introduced into certain former European colonies such as Cape Province and Ceylon.[1]
    • 1902 February 28, “The Horse in South Africa”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record[1], volume 4, number 26, page 828:
      Such had the business become before Lord Somerset left, that in 1821 no less than 196 horses were shipped mostly to India, for military remounts by cavalry officers. The declared value was 56,980 rix dollars, which the then currency represented, an average of about £20 per head, or a total of £4,273.
    • 1962, Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson, Coins: ancient, mediaeval & modern, page 533:
      The Dutch monetary system of a rix-dollar or rijksdaalder of 48 stuiver was continued [in Cape Province] by the British in the early nineteenth century.

Translations edit

References edit

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 The Oxford English Dictionary (2007)