ryō
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre-Meiji Japan.
Example Sentences
- "He pulled three gold ryō out of his pocket, made a hole in one of them with a short sword, and gave it to the child to play with."
- "When he started off to go anywhere, which he frequently did quite casually, he always had two ryō in his pocket, which he explained, was for burial fee."
- "In the early seventeenth century, an ordinary town maid’s wage was 1.5 ryō a year; in the 1740s, it was 2 ryō a year. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, a maid generally received two to three ryō or, at most, three and a half ryō per year."
Etymology
From Japanese 両 (ryō).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: 両