While this term has come to indicate any paper money, its true meaning distinguished paper notes issued by an actual bank that during the 17th century began as private banks and later became to include notes issued by government sanctioned central banks as illustrated. To offset this problem, specialists in corporate finance have come up with the concept of real value of money. The real value of money takes into account inflation, opportunity cost of. A glossary of many of the words and phrases used on RuPaul's Drag Race with definitions and brief explanations. Click the letters above to jump to that section, or use your browser's search function to find the term you are looking for (ctrl + F, or on a Mac Command + F). Feel free to contribute to the page by asking questions in the comments or by editing to add more terms and definitions.

Slang has been used to describe money for centuries, giving us a wide range of expressions to use in reference to currency and credit cards. With that in mind, we’ve taken a look at some of the more interesting terms from around the world, and traced their origins.

To illustrate these glorious slang expressions, we teamed up with Art Money to create visuals using ACTUAL money, with each image created using the currency of the country of the term’s origin.

#1. BOODLE

Origin: US/UK

Meaning: UK/US term for ill-gotten gains. Originates from the Dutch ‘bodel’, meaning personal effects.

EXPLANATION: Although in more recent times this term has been widened to include all forms of money, it was originally used specifically to describe criminal profits, and in particular counterfeit notes. 'Boodle', often elongated to 'caboodle', is used in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and is believed to have been derived from the Dutch word 'bodel', meaning property.

#2. BRASS

Origin: UK

Meaning: Northern English slang for money. Derived from 'Where there's muck, there's brass”, in reference to scrap dealers.

EXPLANATION: This rough and ready phrase comes from the working-class northern English towns of the last century, where many people earned a living dealing with waste materials, giving birth to the expression 'where's there's muck, there's brass' - quite simply, brass could be found among the scrap and sold for profit!

#3. BUCK

Origin: US

Meaning: One dollar. Derived from Pioneer times, when deer (or 'buck') skins were used as currency.

EXPLANATION: Derived from 18th Century, pioneer-era America when buck (deer) skins were used as currency, a 'buck' is slang for one dollar, and has survived into the modern day, where it's still one of the most common terms used to describe money in the USA.

#4. CHEESE

Origin: US

Meaning: Slang term for money. Derived from the fact Americans on welfare used to receive cheese as part of their benefits.

EXPLANATION: This well-known American phrase was born at the end of the Second World War. Welfare packages included a hearty lump of cheese - so to receive your cheese meant to receive your benefits. In recent times the etymology of this phrase has developed further - our American friends often describe cash as 'cheddar'.

#5. MONKEY

Origin: UK via India

Meaning: London slang for £500. Derived from the 500 Rupee banknote, which featured a monkey.

EXPLANATION: While this London-centric slang is entirely British, it actually stems from 19th Century India. The British empire's control of India led to a number of phrases making their way across from the Raj to our shores, with a 'monkey' perhaps the most famous. Referring to £500, this term is derived from the Indian 500 Rupee note of that era, which featured a monkey on one side. Although the ape has since been replaced, the phrase lives on.

#6. QUID

Origin: UK

Meaning: One British Pound. Derived from the Latin Quid Pro Quo, meaning 'one thing in exchange for another'.

EXPLANATION: Perhaps the most famous British example on our list, the word 'quid' refers to a pound, and comes from the well-known Latin phrase 'quid pro quo' - literally 'something for something' - and describes the basic nature of using currency to buy items.

#7. SPONDOOLICKS

Origin: US/Ancient Greece

Meaning: Slang for money. Derived from the Greek Spondulys, meaning 'Shell', which were widely used as currency in ancient times.

Realness Of Money Terms Explained

EXPLANATION: This phrase has fallen out of favour in recent times, but was one of the most commonly-used terms to describe money in 19th Century America. As with the American 'buck' (see above) the phrase 'spondoolicks' refers to an old form of currency. In ancient Greece, spondulys - or shells - were used for bartering, leading to this unusual expression taking hold across the pond.

#8. TUDSE

Origin: Denmark

Meaning: Danish for a 1,000Kr note, or a Tusind krone seddel. Tusind is then shortened to Tudse, which means ‘Toad’ in Danish.

EXPLANATION: Used in Denmark to refer to a 1,000Kr note, this phrase derives from the similarity of the word 'tusind' - thousand - and the word 'tudse' - toad. Yes, that's right - the Danes refer to their money as a toad!

#9. WONGA

Origin: UK

Meaning: Slang for money. Derived from the Romani Wongar, meaning 'coal', which itself was used as slang for money in the 18th and 19th century.

EXPLANATION: 'Wonga' - a corruption of the British Romani word for coal, 'wongar' - is used so frequently in Britain that it's even been borrowed by the country's most notorious loan company. Interestingly, the word 'coal' was itself a slang phrase for currency in the 18th and 19th Century, emphasising this unusual term's long history!

Real terms refers to a value that has been adjusted to take into account the effects of inflation. It contrasts with nominal value.

It is crucial that ‘ordinary’ investors fully understand the meaning of ‘real terms’ and ‘nominal value’. It is massively important, because inflation can considerably undermine the value of money over time – something that has major implications for wage negotiations, retirement planning, budgeting, and long-term investment plans.

If you see a text that says adjusted for inflation, it means the value of something in ‘real terms’. ‘Constant prices’ and ‘current prices’ mean the same as in real terms and nominal value respectively.

Imagine you were paid $20 per hour last year, and today your employer offers you a 10% increase – to $22 per hour. That is a ten percent increase in nominal value.

If inflation for the past 12 months stood at 10%, then that ten percent pay increase, in real terms, means that your income remains the same – you are no better off.

On the positive side, the ten percent pay rate per hour increase also means that your purchasing power has not fallen. However, it is important to consider things in ‘real terms’ when you make your spending plans for the year.

When quoting in nominal values, we are simply looking at the price of things in different points in time. When we quote them in real terms, we have adjusted for differences in the level of prices between those points in time.

According to Money Terms:

“In real terms means the change in a financial number after correcting for the effect of inflation. For example, if a company’s revenues have increased 4% over the previous year, but prices were (on average) 2% higher than in the previous year, then its revenues have only increased 2% in real terms.”

Savings – real terms vs. nominal value

When you are looking to invest your money into a savings account, you need to subtract the annual inflation rate from the annual interest rate that the financial institution is offering you.

If John Doe Savings Inc. offers you a 4% interest rate on a $10,000 deposit, as long as you do not withdraw that money for 12 months, they will tell you that you will be the proud owner of $10,400 at the end of the first year.

This image of the US Federal Minimum Wage since the 1930 tells us two quite different stories. Although nominally, people’s wages have increased over the past eighty years, in real terms we are still way below the peak reached in the 1960s. (Source of Data: econ