piastre

• piaster (US)
• pyaster [17th c.]

From French piastre, from Italian piastra (“plate of wood or metal; coin”), probably from Latin emplastra.

piastre (plural piastres)

1. (now historical) A Spanish or Spanish-American coin and unit of currency, originally worth eight real.
   • 1630, John Smith, True Travels, in Kupperman 1988, p. 39:

     The Silkes, Velvets, Cloth of gold, and Tissue, Pyasters, Chicqueenes and Sultanies, which is gold and silver, they unloaded in foure and twentie houres, was wonderfull [...].

2. A form of currency originally used in the Ottoman Empire, and now used in the Middle Eastern countries of Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan and Syria.

• @ parties, Pirates, Prestia, airstep, eartips, parties, pastier, piaster, pirates, praties, rapiest, raspite, tapiser, traipse

Borrowed from Italian piastra. Doublet of plâtre.

• piasse (Quebec, Louisiana)

• IPA^(key): /pjastʁ/
• (Quebec) IPA^(key): /pjastʁ/, /pjast/, /pjas/
• (Louisiana) IPA^(key): /pjas/

piastre f (plural piastres)

1. (historical) piastre (one of several historical units of currency)
2. (Quebec, Louisiana, colloquial) buck, dollar (former official Canadian French equivalent of the word dollar, as found on old currency.)
   • 2009, Robert Maltais, Le Curé du Mile End, page 195:

     Non, non, c'est juste une joke. Garde-lé, ton vingt piastres.

     No, no, I was just joking. Keep it, your twenty bucks.

   Ça va être six piastres et vingt-cinq sous, s'il te plaît. ― That'll be six dollars and twenty-five cents, please.

• “piastre” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

piastre f

1. plural of piastra

• apriste, arpiste, espatri, estirpa, paresti, pratesi, prestai, rapiste, saperti, sparite, sperati, spirate, spretai, sterpai, stipare, stiperà