peso
Pluralpesos
- 1The standard currency of several Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas (including Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay) as well as the Philippines.
The Mexican peso strengthened against the dollar after the central bank's announcement.
Tourists lined up at the airport counter to exchange their euros for Argentine pesos.
Note
Several nations share the name, so news and finance writing puts the country in front: the Mexican peso, the Argentine peso, the Philippine peso. Its value is usually quoted against the US dollar. In Argentina that comparison became political. Anna Cooban reported in 2023 that Javier Milei wanted the country to swap the peso for the US dollar outright, after years of steep decline.
- 2A former unit of currency in Spain and its colonies, equal to eight reales and also known as the Spanish dollar.
Colonial traders in Manila priced Chinese silk by the peso throughout the seventeenth century.
The ship's ledger recorded a cargo of silver worth ten thousand pesos.
Note
A historian's word, not a traveler's: it belongs to galleons, colonial ledgers and the silver trade of Spain's overseas empire. Use it when writing about that past, where its English name, the Spanish dollar, is a useful gloss for readers. For money spent today in Mexico City or Manila, the same word means the modern national currencies, so a date or setting keeps the two apart.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Spanish "peso."