Meaning of ryō | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Initialism of roll-your-own.
   abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
2. A gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre-Meiji Japan.
3. An anhemitonic pentatonic scale used in a Japanese Buddhist chant, and built up by intervals of major second, major second, minor third, major second, minor third.
   uncountable

Examples

“He pulled three gold ryō out of his pocket, made a hole in one of them with a short sword, and gave it to the child to play with.”

“When he started off to go anywhere, which he frequently did quite casually, he always had two ryō in his pocket, which he explained, was for burial fee.”

“In the early seventeenth century, an ordinary town maid’s wage was 1.5 ryō a year; in the 1740s, it was 2 ryō a year. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, a maid generally received two to three ryō or, at most, three and a half ryō per year.”

CEFR level