DCHP-1 Online

dollar † 

• 1 n. Hist. in colonial days (until 1858 officially), the Spanish dollar, a silver coin valued at so many shillings Halifax currency or York currency.

  See also: half-dollar  Halifax currency  silver dollar (def. 1)  Spanish dollar  York currency  

  • The currency system in colonial Canada was in a highly disorganized state until 1858, when legislation came into effect in United Canada requiring that government accounts be kept in dollars and cents, i.e., in the decimal system, which had been in unofficial use in many quarters for some years.

  • 1764  Whoever will discover the Offender, or Offenders, for that they may be convicted thereof, shall receive a reward of FOUR DOLLARS, by Application to Mr. Sills, in the Lower-Town.
  • 1852  (1923)  Girls, who were scarcely able to wash a floor decently, talked of service with contempt, unless tempted to change their resolution by the offer of twelve dollars a month.
  • 1863  The franchise is almost universal throughout Canada. In 1849 it was lowered to thirty dollars (six pounds sterling) for freeholders, proprietary, or tenantry in towns, and to twenty dollars (four pounds) in rural districts.

• 2 n. the Canadian dollar, a monetary unit of 100 cents, taken over from the decimal system used in the United States and officially adopted in 1858 in United Canada; also, the equivalent of this unit in paper money or coin.

  • 1835  [We [Americans] reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.]
  • 1854  [But mainly do we protest against the use of the monetary term dollar, at all! It always conveys to us the impression that the person who thus expresses himself has a longing to exchange the red cross of Saint George, for the Goose and Gridiron of brother Jonathan.]
  • 1859  We cannot look with favor on any system which is designed as a substitute for the dollar and cent, and we think the dollar should be taken as the unit, instead of the pound.
  • 1872  Even in the Dominion the value of the dollar varies in different provinces.
  • 1965  If every wage earner gets an extra dollar a week, then there are at least $5,000,000 extra spending dollars going around in Canada every week.