a Benjamin
noun

- a hundred dollar bill

- a son of Jacob and the traditional eponymous ancestor of one of the tribes of Israel

Merriam-Webster

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WORD ORIGIN

A $100 bill is colloquially referred to as a "Benjamin" because of the portrait of Benjamin Franklin that is printed on the front of the bill.

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of the United States and his influence on American history led to his portrait being chosen for this denomination.

The term is used primarily in the United States and has permeated pop culture, often used in music and movies to denote wealth or expensive lifestyles.

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ONE-HUNDRED APPEAL
How the number 100 is embedded in Western culture:

- Percentage: 100% represents a whole quantity in the system of percentage. It is often used to denote full completion, full capacity, or perfection.

- Centenary: The term for a 100-year anniversary is a centenary. When someone lives to be 100, it's known as becoming a centenarian.

- Mathematics: 100 is a perfect square, with the square root of 100 being 10. It's also the sum of the first nine prime numbers.

- Roman Numerals: In Roman numerals, 100 is represented as 'C', which stands for centum, the Latin word for 100.

- Sports: Many sports use the number 100 in some way. For instance, there's the 100-meter dash in track and field, and American football fields are 100 yards long.

- Currency: Most currencies, including the dollar and the euro, have a basic unit and a smaller unit that's 1/100th of the basic unit (cents for the dollar, euro cents for the euro, etc.).

- Temperature: In the Celsius temperature scale, 100 degrees is the boiling point of water at sea level.

- Language: In English and many other languages, 100 is often used to express a large quantity, even when the exact number is not necessarily 100. For example, "I've told you a hundred times" generally just means "I've told you many times”.

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SYNONYMS

BENJAMIN, C, c-note, century, century mark, double fifty, five score, full marks, gross score, hundie/hundy, one hundred, perfect square, ten squared, ton

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“Don’t confuse a BENJAMIN with a children’s elephant character if you ever go to the U.S.A.”

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