Harina
Money, cash — literally "flour". The tico equivalent of English "dough".
Related lesson: Costa Rican Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ando sin harina hasta el quince.
I'm skint until the fifteenth.
¿Trajo harina? Aquí no reciben tarjeta.
Did you bring cash? They don't take cards here.
Ese carro debe costar un montón de harina.
That car must cost a fortune.
What It Actually Means
Harina is money in the abstract: the stuff you have, lack, save or spend, with no particular note or coin attached. It stays uncountable and singular — ando sin harina, hay harina, un montón de harina — and it is used far more about the absence of money than its presence, which may say something about the register it belongs to.
Where It Comes From
From flour, and no further mystery is on offer: money has been named after the staple in the larder wherever people have joked about it, from English dough and bread to Spain’s pasta. Costa Rica reached for the sack of flour rather than the loaf. There is no recorded moment of coinage, and anyone offering you a precise one is guessing.
How Natives Use It
Informally and constantly, especially among friends discussing what they cannot afford. It sits alongside the neutral national words — plata for money in general, billete for notes, rojo and tucán for particular colones bills — and it belongs to the same family as Argentina’s guita and mango or the Southern Cone’s luca.
Common Pitfall
Everywhere else in the Spanish-speaking world harina is what you make bread with, so the joke does not travel: ask a Peruvian shopkeeper whether he takes harina and he will point you at the baking aisle. And keep it out of anything transactional — at a bank counter or with a landlord, the word is efectivo.