Colombian peso
- noun
:
peso colombiano
- The launderer delivers the $900,000 in Bogota, generally in Colombian pesos or perhaps in merchandise that is quickly sold for pesos, and later takes possession of the dollars in New York, Los Angeles, or Miami.
Examples
-
I exchanged US dollars for Colombian pesos before my trip to Colombia.
-
But I did know that the Colombian peso was loosely tied to oil because they produce a lot of it.
-
In Colombia, the final stage is conversion into Colombian pesos.
Academic text (1994) -
In my wallet, I keep a few Colombian pesos for small purchases when visiting local markets.
-
The price of the ticket is set at 50,000 Colombian pesos, which is a reasonable cost in Colombia.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a direct composition of 'Colombian' (from Colombia) + 'peso' (a currency unit), so a learner who knows both constituents will infer it denotes Colombia's currency. The nationality + currency naming pattern is cross-linguistically common and non-idiomatic, making the expression fully transparent.
Etymology
Colombian peso comes from the Spanish word peso, meaning 'weight'. Long ago, coins were valued by how much they weighed, so a 'peso' was a coin named for its weight, and that's why Colombian peso today means the country's unit of 'money'.
