legal tender

noun

Updated on: 16 May 2018

Definition of legal tender

: money that is legally valid for the payment of debts and that must be accepted for that purpose when offered

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Examples of legal tender in a Sentence

Soon after France adopted the euro, the French franc ceased to be legal tender.
coins and bills are considered legal tender, but postage stamps are not

Recent Examples of legal tender from the Web

These electronic deposits—which aren’t legal tender in the way notes and coins are—would be converted into central bank money issued by the SNB.

— brian blackstone, WSJ, "Swiss Central Bank Denounces Proposal to Ban Money Creation by Banks," 3 May 2018
India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said in February that the country doesn’t recognize cryptocurrencies as legal tender.

— corinne abrams, WSJ, "Millions’ Worth of Bitcoin Goes Missing at an Indian Exchange. Whodunnit?," 13 Apr. 2018
These large denomination bills are still considered a legal tender, though one hasn't been printed since 1945.

— marlena scott, Teen Vogue, "The Complete History of Money in America, From Pelts to Pennies," 13 Apr. 2018
In this bill, virtual currencies exempted are defined as those that are a digital representation of value and used as a store of value or medium of exchange that are not recognized as legal tender by the U.S. government.

— gary miller, Newsweek, "Blockchain Valley: Wyoming Is Poised To Become the Cryptocurrency Capital of America," 2 Mar. 2018
Many cannot be converted directly into dollars or other legal tender.

— kathleen pender, San Francisco Chronicle, "Bitcoin taxes: plenty of questions, no easy answers," 10 Feb. 2018
But in George Washington’s time, it was used as legal tender.

— david downs, San Francisco Chronicle, "Bill Nye sciences the heck out of marijuana for Netflix," 22 Dec. 2017
In much the same way a company would raise money by selling stock, an ICO sells digital coins to early backers for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies.

— ed fletcher, sacbee, "‘Be prepared for wild volatility.’ Sacramento group looks to join Bitcoin gold rush," 18 Dec. 2017
Zimbabwe doesn’t have its own currency, with the government adopting a basket of foreign currencies including the U.S. dollar and South African rand as legal tender in 2009 after hyperinflation rendered the local dollar worthless.

— godfrey marawanyika, Bloomberg.com, "Cost of Hard Currency Tumbles in Zimbabwe," 28 Nov. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'legal tender.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.