Meaning
Historically, obviously false, counterfeit, suspicious, or highly unusual. The expression is dated and should not be applied to a person: it has also been used as a homophobic stereotype and can be offensive.
Origin
This American simile plays on queer in its older slang sense of counterfeit or not genuine and on the absence of a standard United States federal three-dollar note. Private, state, and obsolete institutions have produced notes marked three dollars, but the federal currency system has no such denomination, making a supposed everyday three-dollar bill an obvious fake. Newspaper evidence places rare or queer as a three-dollar bill in the 1940s, with phony as a three-dollar bill developing as a less ambiguous form. By the mid-twentieth century the expression was also aimed at gay men, giving it a derogatory association that makes modern personal use inappropriate.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- Fake as a three-dollar bill
- Phony as a three-dollar bill
Usage Examples
- The detective in the 1950s novel calls the alibi queer as a three-dollar bill, meaning obviously false.
- That invoice is as phony as a three-dollar bill; the company named on it does not exist.
- Modern editors should avoid applying queer as a three-dollar bill to a person because of its history as a slur.