Colloquial Expressions
"Conto" was the unofficial multiple of the escudo: 1 conto meant 1000$00, 2 contos meant 2000$00 and so on. The original expression was "conto de réis", which meant "one million réis". Since the escudo was worth 1000 réis (the older currency), therefore one "conto" was the same as a thousand escudos. The expression remained in usage after the advent of th euro, albeit less often, meaning €5, roughly worth 1000 escudos.
Read more about this topic: Portuguese Escudo
Famous quotes containing the words colloquial and/or expressions:
“Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)