centavo n : a fractional monetary unit of several countries: El Salvador and Sao Tome and Principe and Brazil and Argentina and Bolivia and Colombia and Cuba and the Dominican Republic and Ecuador and El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras and Mexico and Nicaragua and Peru and the Philippines and Portugal

English

Noun

centavo

1. Currency unit (hundreth of a peso) in Mexico
2. A similar subdenomination of various other currencies.

Portuguese

Noun

1. cent (subunit of currency in US and elsewhere)

Spanish

Noun

1. cent (subunit of currency in US and other countries)

Centavo is a Spanish and Portuguese word, derived from the Latin centum, meaning "one hundred", and the suffix -avo, meaning "portion" or "fraction". Centavo means, strictly, "one-hundredth".

It is a fractional monetary unit, used to represent one hundredth of a basic monetary unit in many countries around the world, including:

Circulating

• Argentine peso
• Bolivian boliviano
• Brazilian real
• Cape Verdean escudo
• Chilean peso
• Colombian peso
• Dominican peso
• East Timor centavo coins
• Ecuadorian centavo coins
• Guatemalan quetzal
• Honduran lempira
• Mexican peso
• Mozambican metical
• Nicaraguan córdoba
• Philippine peso (In English usage, although sentimo (céntimo) is used in Filipino.)

Obsolete

• Costa Rican colón (Between 1917 and 1920 only. As céntimo for other periods.)
• Ecuadorian sucre (New centavo coins continued to circulates after sucre was replaced by U.S. dollar in 2000.)
• Salvadoran colón
• Guinea Bissau peso
• Mozambican escudo
• Portuguese escudo (Before the euro was introduced)
• Portuguese Guinean escudo
• Portuguese Indian escudo
• São Tomé and Príncipe escudo
• Venezuelan venezolano
• Venezuelan peso