Jamaican dollar
- noun
:
dólar jamaicano
- By 1992, the Jamaican dollar had been reduced to an exchange value of 27 Jamaican dollars equaling 1 U.S. dollar.
Examples
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Table 1: Estimated Cost of Damage and Losses in Jamaica following Hurricane Ivan (in millions of Jamaican dollars; $1 US = $70.5 J)
Academic text (2007) -
Everyone, including the tourists, uses Jamaican dollars as a medium of exchange.
Blog text (21) -
By 1992, the Jamaican dollar had been reduced to an exchange value of 27 Jamaican dollars equaling 1 U.S. dollar.
Academic text (1998) -
To these ends, the government moved quickly in 1982 and 1983 to introduce two measures: the deregulation of imports and the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar "to a competitive level to stimulate exports" (JAMPRO 1991, 2).
Academic text (1998) -
Tourists can easily exchange their currencies for Jamaican dollars at local banks.
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The price of the souvenir was 250 Jamaican dollars, which is about 1.75 USD.
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During my trip, I withdrew Jamaican dollars from the ATM to pay for meals and transportation.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is a direct compositional combination of 'Jamaican' (of or relating to Jamaica) and 'dollar' (a unit of currency), so a learner who knows both constituents can infer it denotes the currency of Jamaica. This demonym + currency construction is cross-linguistically common and follows standard English noun modification patterns, making it immediately understandable at B1 level.
Etymology
Jamaican dollar comes from the old use of the word dollar for Spanish silver coins traded by sailors around the Caribbean, and Jamaican shows the money belongs to Jamaica. So Jamaican dollar means the country's official money, divided into 100 cents.
