Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A Canadian coin worth one dollar.
  • noun The Canadian dollar.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Canada, informal The Canadian dollar (both the coin and the monetary unit).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the basic unit of money in Canada

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From the image of a loon on one side of the coin.]

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Examples

  • A loonie is our dollar, Nom, which is about $1.01 to you.

    DOCUMENTARY ROUNDUP 2008

  • Canadian gave it the name loonie because it has a picture of a common loon, a popular Canadian bird, on its reverse and it has Queen Elizabeth II on its obverse.

    xml's Blinklist.com 2008

  • And while the loonie is tied more closely to the USD, it’s not pegged.

    Matthew Yglesias » Dollar Dollar Bill 2010

  • Hey Al, I have no idea what a loonie is or how much it’s worth, but you’ve got a deal there, player.

    DOCUMENTARY ROUNDUP 2008

  • But Canada isn't quite the bargain it used to be: Since 2004 the Canadian dollar (known as the loonie) is up 25% against the U.S. dollar.

    The Best Foreign Retirement Havens 2010

  • But Canada isn't quite the bargain it used to be: Since 2004 the Canadian dollar (known as the loonie) is up 25% against the U.S. dollar.

    The Worlds Best Retirement Havens 2010

  • But Canada isn't quite the bargain it used to be: Since 2004 the Canadian dollar (known as the loonie) is up 25% against the U.S. dollar.

    The Best Foreign Retirement Havens 2010

  • The dollar coin is called a loonie, because there's a picture of a loon (the bird) on one side.

    it's the little things 2005

  • Late Friday in New York, one Canadian dollar -- known as the loonie for the bird pictured on coins -- fetched $1.06.

    Loonie's Rise Yields 2007

  • The currency, known as the loonie for the bird on the C$1 coin, climbed as much as 0.8 percent to $1.0171.

    BusinessWeek.com -- Top News 2011

Comments

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  • The Canadian one dollar coin.

    March 3, 2007

  • The face on the front, so I've heard
    Is not what the natives preferred.
    The payback, though puny,
    Is there on the loonie,
    Where they give the old lady the bird.

    June 30, 2014