Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
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
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