On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 07:50:12PM -0600, will trillich wrote: > OT: so where's the lexicon that relates quid, guinea, bob, > shilling, pence, pound and so forth, for the ignorant > north-americaner? :)
OK, Just to make things more complicated British money changed around 1970 from 1 pound = 240 pennies from 1 pound = 100 new pennies, ie. the value of the pound stayed the same but the penny changed. The 1/240-pound sort of pennies are now called "old pennies", but of course they were just pennies at the time. Quid = pound (slang) Pence = alternative form of Pennies Shilling = 12 old pennies = 5 new pennies Half-crown = 2/6 (2 shillings and 6 pence), 30 old pennies, 12.5 new pennies Bob = shilling (slang) Hapenny = half-penny (elision) Thruppenny bit = 3 (old) penny coin Guinea = 1 pound 1 shilling. This is something to do with the gold standard; British money used to be defined in terms of so much gold being worth 1 guinea. No idea why this weird unit was used. Then we came off the gold standard, then went back onto it for a while but this time in terms of pounds instead of guineas, then came off it again. Sovereign = Gold coin worth one pound, from the days of the gold standard; still officially worth one pound, but worth considerably more to coin collectors. There was once an income tax fiddle where an employer paid his employees a wage of a few pounds a week, but he paid in sovereigns, so the employees then took them to a local coin dealer and sold them for about 40 times their official value. The employer then bought them back off the coin dealer for the next pay packet. Sovereigns are now mostly used as the ornament on finger rings by drug dealers and serial burglars. (That means ones who burgle a lot, not ones who pinch your data via RS232.) I tend to use terms like "quid" or "pound" because I still expect pound (£) signs to be turned into hash (#) signs by non-British equipment. To make matters worse, Americans sometimes call hash signs pound signs, so asking "did my pound signs come out OK" can get a misleading answer. Puzzles me a bit - I thought # was an American symbol anyway - does it just have two American names, one of which is better at crossing oceans? (Because "pound" is heavy, and sinks?) Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
