Costa Rican colón
- noun
:
colón costarricense
- The price of the book is 500 Costa Rican colones.
Examples
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I exchanged my dollars for Costa Rican colones at the airport.
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The price of the meal was 3,500 Costa Rican colones at the local restaurant.
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He compared the value of the Costa Rican colón to the US dollar before making his purchase.
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Tourists usually exchange their dollars for Costa Rican colón when traveling in Costa Rica.
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He compared the value of the Costa Rican colón to the US dollar before making his purchase.
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Tourists usually exchange their dollars for Costa Rican colón when traveling in Costa Rica.
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The price of the meal was 3,500 Costa Rican colones at the local restaurant.
Synonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
Costa + Rican + colón
The phrase combines a demonym/adjective referring to Costa Rica ('Costa Rican') with the noun 'colón' (a currency unit), so the meaning — the currency of Costa Rica — is directly derivable from the parts. This is a common, compositional pattern cross-linguistically (e.g. 'Japanese yen', 'US dollar'), and a B1 learner who knows the constituents would understand it.
Etymology
Costa Rican colón may come from the explorer Christopher Columbus, who is called Colón in Spanish, because Costa Rica named its coins after him when it began to use its own money. So the name colón now refers to the 'money' of Costa Rica.