five-six
five-six noun: a moneylending scheme stereotypically associated with Indian nationals, especially Punjabis, in the Philippines.
Noun
five-six (uncountable)
- A moneylending scheme stereotypically associated with Indian nationals, especially Punjabis, in the Philippines.
- One of their most notorious loan arrangements is the "five-six” scheme, that is, for every five pesos borrowed, six must be returned. Usually daily payment is demanded from the first day of the loan, although sometimes payment falls due at the ...1991, Dimitri A. Germidis, Denis Kessler, Rachel Meghir, Financial Systems and Development: What Role for the Formal and Informal Financial Sectors?, OECD
- Hapless citizens borrow money from five-six money lenders, e.g. borrowing five thousand and returning six within a month or even a week.2005, Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, Linguistic Society of the Philippines, Linguistics and language education in the Philippines and beyond: a festschrift in honor of Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista
Examples of five-six in a sentence
- Despite their number and their assimilationist proclivities, Filipino Punjabis are sometimes pejoratively called 'five-six Indians'.2006, Brij V. Lal, Peter Reeves, Rajesh Rai, The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora:
- Hapless citizens borrow money from five-six money lenders ('borrowing at high rates of interest', i.e. borrowing five thousand and returning six ... ).2010, Andy Kirkpatrick, The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes, Routledge, →ISBN, page 253:
Forms of five-six
| alternative form | 5-6 |
|---|
Origin of five-six
From the high interest rate given, i.e. when ₱5 is borrowed, ₱6 must be returned.
Questions about five-six
- What does five-six mean?
- Five-six means a moneylending scheme stereotypically associated with Indian nationals, especially Punjabis, in the Philippines.
- How do you use five-six in a sentence?
- Despite their number and their assimilationist proclivities, Filipino Punjabis are sometimes pejoratively called 'five-six Indians'.
- What part of speech is five-six?
- Five-six is a noun.
Words near five-six in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: five-six (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “five-six.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/five-six. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.