Term
Real
also known as Reales (plural)
Etymology
From Spanish real, “royal,” reflecting the issuing authority of the coin.
Definition
The Spanish silver coin of one-eighth of a piece of eight, in circulation from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. A real of eight (i.e., the eight-real coin) was the piece of eight; the single real was the basic coin of small transactions. The English “two bits” expression for a quarter dollar descends from the Spanish two-real coin, which circulated freely in the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century United States.
