peso
peso Lexical Profile
peso Game Scores & Validity
• noun
The basic monetary unit of several Latin American countries (including Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay) and the Philippines, equal to 100 centavos or centésimos.
"Before traveling to Mexico City, she exchanged two hundred dollars for Mexican pesos at the airport currency desk."
An old Spanish silver coin equal to eight reals, widely used in trade throughout the Americas and Europe from the 16th to the 19th century.
"Marine archaeologists recovered hundreds of silver pesos from the wreckage of the seventeenth-century Spanish galleon."
• Rhymes for peso
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish peso, literally meaning 'weight,' from Latin pensum ('something weighed out'), the past participle of pendere ('to weigh'). It originally referred to a standard weight of gold or silver in Spanish colonial coinage.