Word.ws English Dictionary

kopi money

kopi money is the alternative spelling of coffee money.

Meaning of coffee money

Noun

coffee money (uncountable)

  1. (slang) Loose change.
  2. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, idiomatic) A small amount of money given as a bribe or gratuity.
    • Singapore is free of corruption as any place on earth. (Even small-scale bribery attempts lead to immediate arrest.) Ironically, this has surfaced as a disadvantage for Singaporeans conducting business in other countries - where contacts aren’t always considered binding, bureaucratic inefficiency...1998, Alexandra Kett, Passport Singapore: Your Pocket Guide to Singaporean Business, Customs & Etiquette, page 31

Origin of kopi money

Calque of Malay duit kopi. By surface analysis, kopi + money. kopi itself comes from Malay kopi, which is itself from English coffee.

Questions about kopi money

What is kopi money the alternative spelling of?
Kopi money is the alternative spelling of coffee money.

Words near kopi money in the dictionary

  1. kopi auntie
  2. kopi aunties
  3. kopi aunty
  4. kopi kia
  5. kopi luwak
  6. kopi money
  7. kopi tiam
  8. kopi tiams
  9. kopiah
  10. kopiahs
  11. kopides

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kopi money (page history and authors); coffee money (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: “kopi money.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kopi_money. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.