Dollar, name of various coins and paper money formerly or currently in use in parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the western hemisphere. It is the standard value, or unit of account, in the monetary systems of Canada and the United States. The word dollar comes from the old German Daler or Taler, an abbreviation of joachimsthaler, the name of a silver coin, imprinted with an effigy of St. Joachim, which was first struck (1519) in what is now Germany. Later, a large milled-edged silver coin called peso duro (hard dollar as it is known in English) was minted in Spain and widely used in the Spanish and English colonies of the New World.
