[236/365] £

[cosmolinguist]

Today an internet friend said

Caught myself quoting someone "ninety quid" for something, and it got me thinking about what point quids become pounds. You never really hear somebody say "that'll be one thousand eight hundred and twenty four quid" or whatever do you

This is such a great question! It made my little linguistics-undergrad heart so happy. Because we all have a pretty refined and regulated internal sense of the languages we speak well, but almost all of it is subconscious. Because the language features we pay attention to and have particular associations with (like saying "wooder" for water) are just the tip of the iceberg. We follow patterns all the time but don't know that we have developed those patterns.

Especially in relatively informal language use -- because we may be taught how to speak/write "properly" but no one tells us overtly how to talk to our peers or how to play with language. That stuff isn't valued as highly -- sometimes that's even treated as if it's in opposition to "proper" language, like fifteen years ago when old people worried that txt spk would render students literally unable to spell anything in the standard way for their schoolwork.

But yeah. No one ever taught me when to say "pounds" and when to say "quid," and I'd never thought about it before, but when I saw this question I immediately

1) recognized the distinction between naming amounts of money as either "pounds" and "quid" as something familiar to me (even though I didn't start using the word quid until my 20s, and at first was told not to use it because it sounded wrong in my accent!

and

2) had an idea already that felt plausible for what the distinction might be

Other respondents had their own theories -- most taking the question at face value and replying with what they thought the cutoff is where quid changes to pounds, like "over a thousand" or "over two thousand" -- but I of course had to problematize the very assumptions of the question itself.

I said that I think there's kind of a cutoff (I said 100) but also that any round number can be quid: not just their "ninety quid" quote but, say, "nine thousand quid" or "90 million quid." Sentences like "he spent almost nine thousand quid on his car" or "the government has wasted 90 million quid on this" seem perfectly fine to me. My (completely off-the-cuff) theory is that a round number can indicate a certain amount of informality. I guess that I think round numbers feel less formal? There's the potential for a "this is close enough" vibe that makes it suit the informal register of "quid."

I wonder (though now I'm thinking about it too much and can't trust myself) if there's an difference of emphasis there too? "The government wasted a million quid" feels more forceful to me than "the government wasted a million pounds." Maybe this is a phonetics thing? Quid has the sharp plosives to begin and end on, and only that little vowel in the middle. Pounds ends in that lingering fricative, and the vowel is so open and feels longer to say because it's a diphthong. (That's all speculation, I don't know phonetics at all.)

What do you think? If you talk about quid and pounds (or dollars and bucks, or any currency that has a common slang term), do you feel like there is a pattern your brain uses to choose one word over the other? What's the pattern?

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Also the working class association of "wasted a million quid" is extremely sharp, as that's a fuckin' life-changing amount of money, it's just so much money and it's even more in the misery of knowing that money could fix so many personal hardships. "Wasted a million pounds" could be any bureaucratic error done in the service of trying to do the right thing.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes I had this same thought about class. When I imagine someone saying this, it's definitely a working-class accent I hear in my head.

[zhelana]

The guy on the gameshow i was watching last week kept saying "you've added 1000 quid to the jackpot" and "the jackpot stands at 3000 quid" but I guess that's a round number, too

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah and those kind of game shows are very informal in their register too.

[ireneultramarine]

This is such an interesting discussion! Got me thinking about how my own native language (Mandarin) handles currency terms. In Chinese, it's also something to do with how bigger and more precise numbers are associated with more formal registers, I think? Hmm, will be thinking about this for days to come.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad it's interesting to you! Thanks for sharing the information about Mandarin too.

[hairyears]

The easy answer is that 'Quid' and 'Bucks' are informal terms, used as part an informal negotiation which would use simple and well-rounded amounts.

So the bricklayer quotes 'Two hundred and fifty quid cash, mate' and the accountant repeats it as 'Two hundred and ninety-three pounds and seventy-five pence'.

[cosmolinguist]

I think any time there are pennies involved, it's not going to be "quid" that gets said. :)

[annofowlshire]

As another transplant my not very helpful input: I tend to use quid for "under 100" values which is just... something I picked up informally? When I had to explain what a "quid" is to my confused visiting family members, I said "it's like saying dollars vs bucks."

[cosmolinguist]

Well I wouldn't say it's unhelpful when it says everything I said. :) Always good to have someone feel similarly about these things, it helps me feel like I'm not completely off-base.

[caged_dragon]

Off the cuff, I would only ever use "bucks" for a rounded amount. Probably nothing more specific than two specified digits, at most -- "28 bucks" for $27.99 is ok, but so would "30 bucks" be. $269.99 would probably be "270 bucks," but $289.99 would likely go straight to "300 bucks."

Never, ever, "27 and a half bucks."

Then again, I'm elder Gen X, and very rarely does anyone my age has any idea what I'm talking about when I refer to a five-dollar bin as a "fin." Even "sawbuck" for a ten-dollar bill is stretching it, possibly because with ATMs we no longer get anything smaller than twenties ("double sawbucks"!) except in change.

[barakta]

I think you're right about the round numberedness of quid usage.

My sister and I would absolutely use quid "It'll cost umpty-quid" and while it's usually rounded I have heard six-and-a-half-quid sort of usage but not any more divided up than that. There's also 'fiver' 'tenner' but not really anything for £20 upwards like that (I know some folk use "ton" for £100 but that isn't in my lexicon). It feels like quid is more commonly used than pounds in casual conversation cos "FOO Pounds" sounds quite posh and formal in my head now.

For larger money values like in the thousands, I'd probably use "K" (pronounced kay). "House prices round here are about £200k" sort of usage. Wikipedia suggests "grand" for this kind usage and while I may have used that in the past, and understand it, I wouldn't use it now which is interesting.

I don't think my parents use "quid" as a slang term at all. And I can't tell if this is an age/class things thing or because of decimalisation of currency which happened when my parents were ~20 years old (Feb 1971). My mum certainly uses old-money words/slang* like 3-and-6, thruppence-ha'penny as sort of meta-syntactic amounts. Tuppence implies cheap for example not literal two-pence. I don't know if quid was used for old-money or not....

I can't tell if my Dad doesn't use quid or old-money slang cos he was required to speak RP while growing up (and was prep private school educated till he was 12) cos of grandparental oddities (including when having strong-RP accent was seen as necessary for being able to get good jobs etc) or whether he wouldn't use those words cos of his personality and general quietness.

[silveradept]

There's some interesting choices of what works and what doesn't here, and it seems to trip over specific constructions.

"A million bucks" - yes.

"A million and a half bucks" - no.

"Half a million bucks" - yes.

"One buck" - not unless we're talking about wildlife.

"A buck" - yes.

"Three bucks fifty" - not usually.

"[A] buck fifty" - yep.

I don't know if there's rhyme or reason to this, but it seems to trip up on the use of "one" not followed by "hundred" or greater denominations, and it tends to fall over if there's any denomination that follows "bucks," except when it's "a buck" by itself.

I don't know if quid generally follows the same thing or not.