What does "chavos" mean?

Money.

Country: 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico
Say it: CHAH-vohs
Register: Safe anywhere

How it's actually used

The standard Puerto Rican word for money in casual speech. "No tengo chavos" is I am broke.

Examples

No tengo chavos hasta el viernes. I'm broke until Friday.
Eso cuesta muchos chavos. That costs a lot of money.

Where it comes from

From "ochavo," an old Spanish coin worth an eighth of a real.

Before you say it

In Mexico "chavos" means kids, not money. Same word, entirely different meaning.

What other countries say

Mexico says varo or lana, Argentina says guita, Colombia says plata, Spain says pasta.

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Now actually use it out loud

Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Puerto Rican Spanish — it uses chavos the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Puerto Rican Spanish.