Idiom
coffee money
Meaning
A small amount of money given as a bribe or gratuity.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I gave the guard some coffee money to let me park here.”
“The official refused to sign the permit until I offered him some coffee money to speed up the process.”
“While the transaction was technically legal, the consultant expected a bit of coffee money to ensure the contract was awarded to his preferred firm.”
Examples
simple
“I gave the guard some coffee money to let me park here.”
contextual
“The official refused to sign the permit until I offered him some coffee money to speed up the process.”
complex
“While the transaction was technically legal, the consultant expected a bit of coffee money to ensure the contract was awarded to his preferred firm.”
Origin
A euphemism describing a sum sufficient to purchase a single cup of coffee, functioning in its sense of a bribe or gratuity as a calque of the Malay *duit kopi*.
Key words
Related idioms
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