louis d'or
- noun
- /luˈi dɔr/
- Archaic
:
louis d'or
- The rare coin he found at the antique shop turned out to be a louis d'or from the reign of King Louis XIV.
Examples
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In the 18th century, a small house could be bought for just a few louis d'or.
-
During his travels in France, he collected several louis d'or as souvenirs of his adventures.
-
Chevalier, will you give me credit for 5,000 Louis d'or, please?
Synonyms
16
9.9
A former British gold coin worth 21 shillings used from the 1600s to the early 1800s
14
9.9
A gold coin used in Europe long ago
5
9.9
A Spanish gold coin used from the 1500s to the 1800s
1
9.9
A former United States gold coin worth twenty dollars
A former French gold or silver coin used from the Middle Ages to the 1700s
A former United States gold coin worth five dollars
Surface Forms
Morphology
louis + d'or
The term is a French proper-name for a historical coin and the constituent items are non‑English (marked as not found), so a B1 learner who merely knows English vocabulary would not be able to compose the specific meaning. Even if a learner recognized 'Louis' as a name and 'd'or' as 'of gold', the fact that it refers to a particular former French gold coin bearing the king's image is lexical/historical knowledge not derivable from simple composition, making it opaque.
Etymology
Louis d'or comes from old French coins that showed the king Louis on one side and used d'or, which means 'of gold', in the name. So louis d'or became the name for those former French gold coins.