paper money

1. uncountableCash in the form of banknotes.

   Synonyms: folding money, paper currency · Antonyms: commodity money

alternative paper-money

1. uncountableA type of joss paper resembling banknotes burnt to venerate the deceased, ancestor spirits, deities, etc.

   Tablets in honour of the dead are set up in every house over a sort of family altar; and at certain times flowers are offered and paper-money is burned at these shrines.

   1873, William Curry, Jun., & Company, The Dublin University Magazine, volume 81, page 393

   5 more examples

   Moreover, you say that serving Fuh is a profitable service; that if you burn paper money, present offerings, and keep fasts before the face of your god Fuh, he will dissipate calamities, blot out your sins, increase your happiness, and prolong your age!

   1848, Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants, page 558

   Tsze Chien means “paper money” – not the real bank notes which are so extensively used in China as money but the make-believe tinsel money which the Chinese burn as part of their religious worship.

   1893, Henry Addison Nelson, Albert B. Robinson, The Church at Home and Abroad, page 108

   People had also begun to burn paper money (it was believed that burning transformed it into real money that could be used by the departed souls in hades) instead of placing actual coins in the tombs.

   1931, United States National Museum, Proceedings of the United States National Museum, volume 80, page 75

   “Let’s burn the paper money,” Mai Mai said. She brought out a stack of yellow paper from her pocket – coarse paper with small circles cut in it to represent coins. Longevity lighted the paper money and kowtowed another time.

   1967, C. Y. Lee, The land of the golden mountain, page 175

   The paper money for the spirits consisted of imitations either of metal coins or of real money, but the latter had different sets of inscriptions and patterns to distinguish it from counterfeit money.

   1985, Joseph Needham, Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, Science and Civilisation in China, page 102

   Synonyms: hell money