“Franklins” and Other English Slang Terms For Money

There’s no such thing as free lunch. Everything has a price tag. And the saying that money makes the world go round is unfortunately true. Perhaps ABBA, the famous Swedish pop group, might agree. They even have a song called “Money, Money, Money.” The song is quite catchy. It talks about a woman whose dream is to meet a wealthy man so that she’ll have a lot of money to pay her bills and won't need to work. If you’ve seen the movie called Mamma Mia!, you’d remember Meryl Streep singing this song.

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“Money, money, money. Must be funny, in the rich man’s world. Money, money, money. Always sunny, in the rich man’s world.”

This five-letter word is so important that we talk about it everyday. We hear it in the news, pop culture, and music above all else. Rihanna referred to money as mula in her song “Bitch Better Have My Money.” Puff Daddy or P. Daddy refers to money as Benjamins in his song “All About the Benjamins.” Hall & Oates refer to money as old man’s money in their song “Rich Girl.”

Money is so important that people have come up with different slang terms for it. In English, there are many words that are used to refer to money. Additionally, these phrases are used in everyday conversations. So these slang terms are not just your whatever words because they are actually terms that make the mundane word of money sound cool. What other names do you have for the word money?

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• Cha-ching – another way to call money and the sound the cash register makes
• Hundie – a hundred dollar bill
• Cheese – another term for money because American welfare recipients once received cheese as payment
• Bank – a lot of money
• Making bank – making a lot of money
• Dinero – the Spanish word for money
• Stash – refers to the money you have put away
• Wad – having a lot of cash
• Tenner – ten dollar bill
• Cheddar – another food term used to refer to money
• Dough – the Oxford Dictionary claims that the slang, which is a branch off of the slang "bread," was first used in a Yale article in 1851
• Bread – describes money in general; the term has been used since the 19th century
• Fiver – five dollar bill
• Grand – $1,000; the phrase was created by the mob in the early 1900s as a disguise
• G – short for Grand or $1,000 (see definition above)
• Franklins – refers to one hundred bills
• Green – reference to the color of American dollars
• Bacon – money; a reference to the expression "bring home the bacon," which means earning money to bring food to the table
• Lettuce – currency or money
• Moola or moolah – means money; the slang was first used in 1936
• Rack – thousands and thousands of dollars
• Riches – money, money, money
• Salad – money
• Cake – another food slang that means money
• Yard – $100