英语词汇not worth a continental的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

not worth a continental. Before the U.S. Constitution was adopted, the Continental Congress had no power of taxation to raise revenue. The Congress issued bills of credit called conti- nentals, the dollar bills of the time, printing bills with a face value of more than $250 million though there was virtually no bullion or specie in the treasury with which to redeem them. To make matters worse, the British and Tories circulated im- mense amounts of counterfeit continentals, selling them for the price of the paper they were printed on and sending the fake currency out of New York City by the cartload with per- sons going into other colonies. By 1790 continental dollars were worth so little that it took 40 paper dollars to buy a dollar in silver and the expression not worth a continental—worth- less—had become part of the language.

词汇	not worth a continental
词源	not worth a continental. Before the U.S. Constitution was adopted, the Continental Congress had no power of taxation to raise revenue. The Congress issued bills of credit called conti- nentals, the dollar bills of the time, printing bills with a face value of more than $250 million though there was virtually no bullion or specie in the treasury with which to redeem them. To make matters worse, the British and Tories circulated im- mense amounts of counterfeit continentals, selling them for the price of the paper they were printed on and sending the fake currency out of New York City by the cartload with per- sons going into other colonies. By 1790 continental dollars were worth so little that it took 40 paper dollars to buy a dollar in silver and the expression not worth a continental—worth- less—had become part of the language.
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