Shilling

How to spell shilling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shilling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shilling mean?

1. nounA former British coin and unit of currency worth twelve old pence, equal to one twentieth of a pound.

Shilling in a sentence

• In old novels a loaf of bread might cost a single shilling.

• Her grandfather kept a worn shilling from before decimalisation in a drawer.

Where does shilling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shilling descends from the Old English scilling, the name of a small coin used among the Anglo-Saxons long before England had a single national currency. The word is Germanic to its core, with close cousins in the Old High German scilling and the modern German Schilling, and its ultimate sense may relate to a root meaning 'to divide' or 'to ring/resound', though scholars are not fully agreed. For centuries the shilling was worth twelve pence, with twenty shillings making one pound, an arrangement that survived in Britain until decimalisation in 1971. The familiar abbreviation 's.' for shillings actually came not from the English word but from the Latin solidus, a late Roman gold coin, which is also why the slash sign in old prices was once called a solidus. The doubled 'l' that trips writers today simply preserves the spelling of the Old English original, which already carried that double consonant.

How the word is built

• shill- (from Old English scilling, a coin)
• -ing (noun ending fossilised in the root)