I've often been wondering where the phrase in the title comes from - I always picture it as coming from an early television era game show, but more likely it has to do with pricing of telegrams or news paper advertisements?
In particular, I'd like to know if there is a more subtle meaning to the numerical value being used; at least, moreso than "higher value means more sophisticated."
From memory, I've seen it used (at least) with 0.10$, 2$, 3$, 4$, 5$ and 10$. Which values are commonly used to indicate what? Would a native speaker intuitively spot someone who's just making up numbers (e.g. "8$ word")?
I've searched ELU and found a few usages, but no discussion about it:
Should I use 10 cent words or $2 words?
Is "autodidact" too obscure to use in a résumé?
Are these phrases too posh-sounding for conversational English?