Definition of "legal tender" []

• Legally valid currency that may be offered in payment of a debt and that a creditor must accept. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No.X. At a time when at serious and unimpassioned discussion would be heeded, other considerations of a more general nature would be deemed very potent obstacles in the way of those who would engraft the power of Congress to constitute its paper money a legal tender in payment of debts, upon the clause of the Constitution delegating the authority to use auxiliary means, "necessary and proper" to carry into effect primary, specified powers."
• "My proposition is distinctly this: That by the Constitutions of the quondam United States and of the Confederate States, no government, State or Federal, can make anything but gold and silver current coin MONEY; that neither government can make anything else a legal tender in payment of debts; no matter whether or not either or both governments may emit "bills of credit.""
• "The States were prohibited to make anything but "specie" a legal tender without the consent of Congress."