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In the mountains of Bohemia is the small town of Jáchymov. In the early 16th century, the town was known by its German name, Sankt Joachimstal. At that time, a silver mine was opened nearby, and coins were minted to which the name joachimstaler was applied. In German this was shortened to Taler. Shortly afterward the Dutch or Low German form daler was borrowed into English to refer to the Taler and other coins that were patterned after it, such as the Spanish peso, which circulated widely in Britain’s North American colonies. Our modern word dollar is a different spelling of this daler. When the newly independent American colonies settled on an official monetary unit in 1785, they chose the name dollar.
Examples of dollar in a Sentence
Arkansas Online, 29 Oct. 2025
While there is little information about the size of the NRO’s budget, the New York Times reported in 1994 that the budget was around $6 billion (around $12 billion in 2024 dollars).
—Literary Hub, 28 Oct. 2025
Predictions for the multibillion-dollar market’s compound annual growth rate range between 25% and 30%.
—Andrew Nusca, Fortune, 28 Oct. 2025
That’s the problem New York entrepreneur Brynn Putnam — the woman who sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for half a billion dollars — set out to solve with Board, a tabletop console designed to make screens social again.
—Jennifer Jolly, USA Today, 28 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for dollar
Cite this Entry
“Dollar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dollar. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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dollar
noun
from Dutch daler "silver coin formerly used in Germany," from German Taler (same meaning), shortened from Joachimstaler "a coin made in Sankt Joachimsthal (Saint Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia (a former kingdom in Europe)"
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