rix-dollar

Borrowed from obsolete Dutch rijcksdaler (modern rijksdaalder), after early modern German reichsthaler; compare riche, dollar.[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪksˌdɒlə/[1]

rix-dollar (plural rix-dollars)

1. (now historical) A silver coin and money of account in use from the late-16^th to the mid-19^th centuries in the European Teutonic countries and their imperial trading networks.[1]
   • 1803, [Author Unknown], Medical Journal — Volume IX, p539

     At all other times they would receive the regular salary of thirty rix-dollars monthly.

   • 1999, Mike Mitchell, translating HJC von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, V.6, Dedalus 2016, p. 373:

     He sent for the celebrated necromancer who lived at the sign of the Goatskin and whose familiar spirit so plagued the thief that he returned the stolen goods to their rightful owner, for which the sorcerer was paid ten rix-dollars.

2. (historical) A unit of currency introduced into certain former European colonies such as Cape Province and Ceylon.[1]
   • 1962, Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson, Coins: ancient, mediaeval & modern, p533

     The Dutch monetary system of a rix-dollar or rijksdaalder of 48 stuiver was continued [in Cape Province] by the British in the early nineteenth century.

• rix-baron