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Ever notice how Americans talk about *bills*, but Brits talk about *notes*?

In the US, we pull a twenty-dollar *bill* from our wallet. In the UK, it's a twenty-pound *note*. Both refer to the same thing — paper currency — but the difference in terminology is more than just a transatlantic quirk: it's a linguistic divide that reflects deeper patterns in English usage and monetary history.

The word *note* comes from the longer term *banknote*. That may seem obvious, but it's worth saying. What might be less obvious is that the word *banknote* itself is a relic of a time when paper money really was just a promissory note issued by a bank. This terminology stuck around in British English, and it's still the formal term in both countries. The US Treasury itself uses *note* in legal contexts; just look at a dollar bill and see "Federal Reserve Note" printed at the top. But in everyday American speech, we dropped "note" in favor of *bill*, a more casual term that may have evolved from phrases like *bill of credit* or *bill of exchange*, both of which refer to promissory financial documents.

In other words, *note* was the formal term, *bill* the informal. Over time, the US favored the informal in speech, while the UK held onto the formal.

And that's pretty much it. Just another case of the US embracing casual language before it was cool. 

Looking beyond English, most of the world went the *note* route. French has *billet* (basically "note"), German *Banknote*, Japanese uses 紙幣 (*shihei*, literally "paper currency") or sometimes just お札 (*osatsu*, which also means "note"). Spanish uses *billete* ("note"). Even Canadian English tends to follow British usage, with *note* as the more common term in speech.

So while "bill" may feel natural to Americans, it's actually the outlier on the global stage. Most other countries lean toward *note*, either directly or in translation. And it’s worth noting — pun intended — that the US is internally inconsistent: we still use *note* in formal legal terms, like Treasury notes, promissory notes, and the printed label on our currency. It’s just that everyday speech prefers the other term.

But we also tend to use Imperial for everyday measurements, even though we officially define everything in metric.[^1] American inconsistency doesn’t stop with paper money. 

[^1]: Ok, to be pedantic, technically the US system is a bit different from the Imperial System. Both the US system, which we might call US Customery Units, and the Imperial System evolved from the old English system. They are similar but not exactly the same. Compare a US pint (473ml) with a British pint (568ml), and you’ll quickly realize that when it comes to ordering a beer, you'd be better to do so in the UK.

Language does what it wants, of course. But if you're writing something formal, internationally read, or even just a blog post like this one, *note* might be the better bet. That’s generally the approach I take here — when in doubt, I go with note (or banknote).

[title]: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/dbooster/23vsQfHCwTEqDmefYmQQdsVS3d2P52kA9dVWhCYn8svqSffUSVMzwZJq8Wm7Bg9cepoSE.png