​Money: Multiple Choice Vocabulary Test

Money is used for buying or selling goods, for measuring value and for (1) _______ wealth. Almost every society now has a money economy based on coins and paper (2) _______ of one kind or another. However, this has not always been true. In primitive societies a system of barter was used. Barter was a system of direct exchange of (3) _______ . Somebody could exchange a sheep, for example, for anything in the marketplace that they considered to be of equal (4) _______. Barter, however, was a very unsatisfactory system, because people’s precise needs seldom (5) _______.

People needed more practical system of exchange, and various money systems developed based on goods which the members of a society (6) _______ as having value. Cattle, grain, teeth, shells, feathers, skulls, salt, elephant tusks, and tobacco have all been used.

Precious metals gradually took over because, when made into coins, they were (7) _______, durable, recognizable, and divisible into larger and smaller units of value. A coin is a piece of metal, usually disc-shaped, which (8) _______ lettering, designs or numbers showing its value. Until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coins were given monetary (9) _______ based on the (10) _______ amount of metal contained in them, but most modem coins are based on face value — the value that governments choose to give them, irrespective of the actual metal (11) _______.

Most governments now (12) _______ paper money in the form of bills, which are really ‘promises to pay’. Paper money is obviously easier to handle and much more convenient in the modem world. Checks and credit cards are being used increasingly, and it is possible to imagine a world where ‘money’ in the form of coins and paper currency will no longer be used.

Answers:

1.B; 2.B; 3.C; 4.A; 5.A; 6.B; 7.D; 8.C; 9.A; 10.D; 11.C; 12.C