Lebanese pound
- noun
:
libra libanesa
- When we reached the Lebanese border, they made us pay a fee of 50,000 Lebanese pounds ($33) for each one of the five of us.
Examples
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When we reached the Lebanese border, they made us pay a fee of 50,000 Lebanese pounds ($33) for each one of the five of us.
Blog text (5) -
He is able to support us with 10,000 Lebanese pounds ($6) per day to buy bread, yogurt, and eggs; meat and chicken are luxuries to us at the moment.
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He is able to support us with 10,000 Lebanese pounds ($6) per day to buy bread, yogurt, and eggs; meat and chicken are luxuries to us at the moment.
Blog text (5) -
The Lebanese pound (lira in Arabic, or livre in French) is the official unit of currency in Lebanon.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is a straightforward combination of a nationality adjective and a currency noun: 'Lebanese' (from Lebanon) + 'pound' (a unit of currency), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to Lebanon's currency. This pattern (e.g. 'British pound', 'US dollar') is cross-linguistically common and follows regular English noun modification, making it immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Lebanese pound may come from the old idea of a pound as a weight of silver used to make coins. So pound became a common name for 'money', and today the Lebanese pound is the money used in Lebanon, equal to 100 piasters.
