British money slang

Safe to say

• QuidSafe to sayPounds, one for one. Ten quid is ten pounds.
• FiverSafe to sayA five-pound note. Have you got a fiver for the taxi.
• TennerSafe to sayA ten-pound note. The price of lunch out, most days.
• GrandSafe to sayA thousand pounds. Three grand is three thousand.

Casual

• PonyCasualTwenty-five pounds. Heard at markets and in betting shops.
• MonkeyCasualFive hundred pounds. A monkey changed hands over the car.
• ScoreCasualTwenty pounds. A score down on the thing you want.
• TonCasualA hundred pounds, or a hundred miles an hour. Two jobs, one word.
• BobCasualAn old shilling. Heard in phrases about small sums and old prices.
• BrassCasualMoney, in a northern word. Dirty work can still pay well.
• DoshCasualMoney in general. A light word for cash in hand.
• Bees and honeyCasualMoney, rhymed. Bees and honey shortens to bees.

How this list is arranged

The twelve words fall into two groups. Quid, fiver, tenner and grand are the four plain money words of the set. Say twenty quid or three grand to a colleague and it sounds normal.

The other eight belong to markets, betting shops, pubs and the north: pony, monkey, score, ton, bob, brass, dosh and bees and honey. Learn what they mean when you hear them, and spend the plain words yourself until you know the group.

A note on quid: the plural is quid, as in five quid. One quid, five quid, a thousand quid. Fiver and tenner are notes first and sums second.

A fiver is the five-pound note in your pocket, and it is also the sum of five pounds. Grand means a thousand pounds, so half a grand is five hundred. These three habits will carry you through most money talk in Britain.

The market words are older and narrower. Pony and monkey come from betting and market trading, where short words for sums move fast. Score and ton do double duty.

A score is twenty pounds and a ton is a hundred. But a ton is also a hundred miles an hour, so listen for which one the sentence means.

Bob is history, a shilling from before decimal money, kept alive in phrases. Brass is northern, dosh is light-hearted, and bees and honey is rhyming slang for money, shortened to bees.

Money slang is a good place for learners to start because each word names a fixed sum: a pony is twenty-five pounds. What changes is who says what, so the labels matter more than usual. Use the four plain words first.

The eight casual words suit friends, markets and pubs, and sound wrong in a bank or a letter. If someone names a sum you do not know, ask plainly: sorry, how much is that in pounds.