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Glite Dictionary
Finnish mark

Finnish mark

8.0
The money Finland used before it changed to the euro in 2002
  • noun
translation icon : marco finlandés
  • This twenty-five-month delay cost the Finnish taxpayers nearly 1.5 million Finnish marks.

Examples

  • Wolting was paid well for his services: a monthly salary of 8,000 Finnish marks, out of which he had to pay only 30,000 marks for his four to five-bedroom apartment provided by the Finnish Ministry of Defense.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Then he paid for the shades, peeling a salmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • This twenty-five-month delay cost the Finnish taxpayers nearly 1.5 million Finnish marks.

  • He peeled a salmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks to pay for the shades.

  • Wolting received a monthly salary of 8,000 Finnish marks while living in an apartment provided by the Finnish Ministry of Defense.

Synonyms

markka
vsFinnish mark
  • Archaic
1 9.9

Money used in Finland before the euro came in 2002

is the same in meaning but uses a different written form or name

Surface Forms

Finnish mark singular
Finnish marks plural

Morphology

Finnish + mark

The phrase is directly compositional: an adjective naming the country ('Finnish') plus a noun for a currency unit ('mark') naturally yields 'the mark of Finland' (Finland's former currency). This adjective+noun pattern for national currencies is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

Finnish mark comes from the old word mark, a term used long ago in Europe for a unit of weight or a piece of money. Calling Finland's currency the Finnish mark linked it to that old unit, so the name came to mean 'the money used in Finland' until it was replaced by the euro.