moeda de ouro

Moeda de ouro is Portuguese for 'money of gold' — moeda (money, coin) from Latin moneta + de (of) + ouro (gold) from Latin aurum. The English corruption 'moidore' squeezed three Portuguese words into two English syllables. The coin was first minted in 1640 under King John IV of Portugal, weighing about 10.8 grams of gold. It was worth 4,000 réis in Portuguese currency.

The moidore became an important coin in British trade during the early eighteenth century, particularly in commerce with Portugal and Brazil. The Methuen Treaty of 1703, which established preferential trade between England and Portugal, brought large quantities of Brazilian gold into England in the form of moidores. Daniel Defoe mentioned moidores in Robinson Crusoe (1719) — Crusoe finds a cache of them aboard a wrecked ship. The coin circulated so widely in England that Parliament debated its legal tender status.

The moidore's value fluctuated against English currency, creating arbitrage opportunities. Gold moidores were sometimes worth more melted down than spent, leading to the perennial problem of coin hoarding and export. The coin's gold content — not its face value — determined its real worth. The 'money of gold' was valued for being gold, not for being money.

The moidore ceased to be minted in the early nineteenth century as Portugal reformed its currency. The word survives in eighteenth-century literature, trade records, and pirate fiction. Alongside the doubloon and the piece of eight, the moidore is one of the trinity of literary treasure coins. Its name is the simplest of the three: gold money. No metaphor. No symbol. Just what it is.