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Shilling

The shilling is a unit of currency used in current and former Commonwealth countries, and was continued to be used in countries that left the commonwealth, such as Ireland and Tanzania. more...

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The word is thought to derive from the base skell-, \"to ring/resound\", and the diminutive suffix -ing.

The abbreviation for shilling is s, from the Latin solidus, the name of a Roman coin. Often it was written informally or printed with a slash, e.g., 1/6d as 1 shilling and sixpence (often pronounced \"one and six\"), or when there were no pence with a slash then a hyphen, e.g., \"11/-\". Quite often a triangular shape or (serif) apostrophe would be used to give a neater appearance, e.g., \"1'6\" and \"11'-\". In Africa it is often abbreviated sh. A shilling today would roughly be equivalent to 5 pence

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, a shilling was a coin used from the reign of Henry VII until decimalisation in 1971. Before decimalisation, there were twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling, and thus 240 pence to the pound. Two coins denominated in multiple shillings were also in circulation at this time. They were the florin (2/-), which adopted the value of ten new pence (10p), and the crown (5/-), the highest denominated non-bullion UK coin in circulation at decimalisation.

The hyphen following the slash signified 'no pence'. Until 1971, when decimal coinage was introduced and shillings were abolished, it was common to see labels in shop windows showing some such quantity as 9/11 (read 'nine and eleven'), meaning nine shillings and eleven pence i.e. one old penny short of ten shillings or 'ten bob', the lowest denomination of paper money; there were twelve pence in a shilling, so the final penny-unit possible was eleven pence.

The word shilling comes from schilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. Colonial shillings, such as the 1652 pine-tree shilling, were made in Massachusetts when the Puritans settled in America. At decimalisation, the shilling was superseded by the new five pence piece, which initially was of identical size and weight and had the same value, and inherited the shilling's slang name of a bob.

Irish shillings

In Ireland, the shilling was issued as scilling in Irish and was worth ¹/₂₀th of an Irish pound. The coin featured the bull on the obverse side. The original minting of the coin from 1928 until 1942 contained 75% silver; this Irish coin had a higher content than the equivalent British coin. The Irish shilling was finally withdrawn from circulation on January 1, 1993 as a smaller five pence coin was introduced.