money

Money is the thing we use to represent the value of a person’s worth, and it’s the stuff we use when paying for things. It’s important to learn how to talk about money.

• Do you have any money?
• How much money do you have?
• What kind of money do you make? (It’s generally not polite to ask this kind of a question.)
• If you need money to do something, you have to find it.
• You can borrow money from a bank.
• A bank lends you money.
• If you want money for a future purpose, you save it.
• At work you earn money or you make it.
• If you are bad at managing money, you might lose it.
• Have you ever lost a lot of money?
• If someone takes money directly from you, the money is stolen.

There are many different ways to talk about people and their money:

• A breadwinner is the person in a household who makes most or all of the money.
• A gold digger is a person who marries someone for his or her money.
• A sugar daddy is a man who makes a lot of money and spends it lavishly on his girlfriends.
• A rich man who has a lot of money can afford a trophy wife. (trophy wife = beautiful young woman. Melania Trump is a trophy wife.)
• A miser is a person who never spends money but has a lot of it.
• A spendthrift is a person who carelessly spends money all the time.
• A person who is filthy rich has a lot of money.
• A pauper is a person who has absolutely no money.
• A person who steals money is a thief.
• A person who takes money from his or her place of employment is an embezzler.

There are some popular expressions that include the word "money."

• Money makes the world go round.
• What do you think, I’m made of money?
• Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
• More money, more problems.
• Money, money, money!

You can learn more about money in Red Level Lesson Twenty-one.

Click here to go to the Word of the Day page.

Date of publication: September 19, 2016