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xu & dong

This one goes out to all you Scrabble players out there. The xu is an aluminum penny used in Vietnam, and there are 100 xu in a dong. It's a handy word in the game, since you can get more mileage out of your X's if you use it liberally. You might wonder how foreign currency qualifies as an English word. In some sense, it falls under the jargon of international commerce. Or the lingo of numismatists (coin collectors). After all, if a coin is worth one xu, why not called it a xu? The only other choice is to make up even more obscure words.

By the way, "dong" is from the Chinese "tong" or copper coin. NO connection to what "dong" has come to mean in English.

A weird Wikipedia tangent shows the acronym XU as "a clandestine intelligence organisation working on behalf of Allied powers in occupied Norway during World War II." Here's the Link.

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