legal tender
4
4.0
- noun
- /ˈliːɡəl ˈtɛndər/
- Formal
:
moneda de curso legal
- It acted as legal tender for all debts, public and private.
- legal tender act
I thought I read that it's not legal tender in South, but it's also not legal tender in Scotland.
- I thought I read that it's not legal tender in South, but it's also not legal tender in Scotland.
Examples
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President Lincoln then asked Congress to pass a law authorizing the printing of full legal tender Treasury notes to pay for the war effort.
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The Rhode Island legislature issued paper money and passed legal tender laws to force people to accept the paper money.
Blog text (28) -
If you remember, it's only legal tender for debt and so forth.
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No legal tender was stolen.
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On the other hand, the notes are not legal tender; anyone can refuse to accept a payment in them.
Blog text (31) -
If you look at a dollar bill today, it says it is legal tender, which means it is backed by absolutely nothing.
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In fact, in the US, the Fed has a quasi-monopoly over money thanks in part to "legal tender laws."
Blog text (13) -
The Hong Kong dollar, as the legal tender in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, shall continue to circulate.
Academic text (1990) -
As of the day of the strike, your scrip ceased to be legal tender, meaning that any item of food, clothing, and furniture not paid for in cash money... must be turned over to me and my deputies.
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Merchants must accept cash as legal tender for any debts owed.
Synonyms
4
6.1
Money that the law says people must accept to pay debts
Antonyms
How Official
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'tender' (payment/currency) modified by 'legal' (pertaining to law) yields 'currency that is lawful and must be accepted,' so a learner who knows both words can derive the MWE meaning. This noun-modifier pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows ordinary semantic composition, making it transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Legal tender comes from the words legal and tender. The old meaning of tender is 'to offer', so imagine someone offering money that the law says 'must be accepted', and that is why legal tender means money that must be accepted as payment.