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Understanding British Money: What's a Quid? A Shilling? (2020)

• Temporary_31337 4y ago
  The article is out of date as it suggests that the uk is in the eu
  • InCityDreams 4y ago
    >As a member of the EU, they could have opted to use the Euro, but they decided not to. I think, just very poorly written.
  • ljf 4y ago
    Depends on how you read it - I read as a historical fact: /As a member of the EU, they could have opted to use the Euro, but they decided not to./ So 'when they were a member of the EU, they could have taken in the euro, but didn't, so still have the pound'
    • goodcanadian 4y ago
      Judging from the date on the exchange rates quoted, the UK was still (just) in the EU when it was written. Regardless, the rest of the content is still current either way you interpret it.
  • Symbiote 4y ago
    It's also illustrated with the £1 coin that was withdrawn 5½ years ago, and banknotes that are also all withdrawn years ago. It's also incorrect to say visitors won't deal with £50 notes. They're rarely in ATMs but they are common when exchanging cash abroad.
    • notahacker 4y ago
      It's correct to say visitors shouldn't deal with £50 notes if they can possibly help it, because they will generally struggle to pay for anything with them though..
      • ghaff 4y ago
        Anything over a $20 bill has been hard to use in many/most stores for a very long time in the US (which seemingly at one point decided to freeze currency denominations in amber--see also penny--which I assume is permanent at this point as less and less cash gets used). But $100 bills at least were in pretty common use overseas. I still tend to carry some as backup cash.
      • Symbiote 4y ago
        They shouldn't have any problems in London, especially at places tourists typically frequent. I once worked at such a place, and the till would be stuffed with £50 notes by the end of lunchtime. I realise it's different north of Watford.
    • denton-scratch 4y ago
      £50 notes were popular for criminal transactions, and also they were widely forged; I don't know whether that's still the case, but I'm very reluctant to accept a £50 note. If a shopkeeper checks it and decides it's a forgery, they have to take it off me for nothing, and I'm down fifty nicker.
• gostsamo 4y ago
  Good Omens had one of the most eye-opening introductions to old british currency on the level of monoids and endofunctors. Since then I'm avoiding both.
  • jmfldn 4y ago
    “1 mite = 1/8 penny, 1 farthing = 1/4 penny, 2 farthings = 1 halfpenny (pronounced more like “haypenny”), 2 halfpence = 1 penny (or a ‘copper'), 2 pence = 1 tuppence or a half-groat, 3 pence = 1 thruppence, 4 pence = 1 groat, 6 pence = 1 sixpence (a ‘tanner'), 12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob), 2 shillings = 1 florin ( a ‘two bob bit'), 2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown, 5 shillings = 1 Crown“ What's the problem ;) Joking-aside, it's amazing to me that anyone ever got fluent with this. My dad and grandparents never complain about the pre-decimalisation period so I guess you just get used to it. I think I'll stick to learning the category theory mentioned by op over this.
    • kurthr 4y ago
      If a Crown was an hour, a mite would be 7min and 30sec. You could call 24 Crown and a Drown and 360 of those would be a Yawn. Throw in 5 or 6 extra Drown every Yawn, and you'd add a Drown to the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 11th Shawn of the Yawn, but subtract two Drown from the second Yawn, if you're electing a president, and then only subtract one, cuz Merica!
    • MarcScott 4y ago
      It's no more complicated than measurements and weights in the imperial system. We're a weird country. We decimalised our currency, our weights and measures in shops and science, but we can't let go of imperial measures. Amongst the general population, people are far more comfortable talking about miles and miles per hour, than kilometers. Land sizes are still measured in acres and hectares. If you ask anyone their height, you'll probably get an answer in feet and inches, but ask their weight and they're more likely to tell you in kilograms rather than pounds and stone.
      • Symbiote 4y ago
• MarcScott 4y ago
  There are also coins called the Sovereign and Britannia, which are both legal tender, although not in general circulation. Both are minted from 24 carat gold. The Sovereign has a face value of 1 pound and I think the Britannia has a face value of 5. There actual value, on gold markets, is hundreds of pounds, and for a Britannia is over a thousand. Because they are legal tender, and could theoretically be used to buy a bottle of milk, they are exempt from VAT and capital gains tax, when buying or selling. There's also enduring slang for some some values of cash, that doesn't necessarily have an accompanying bank note. A Pony for 25 pounds and a Ton for 100 is still fairly widely understood, but mostly heard these days in Guy Ritchie movies,.
  • lIl-IIIl 4y ago
    Thank you so much. I finally understand the line "I put a pony on Liverpool" from "IT Crowd".
    • roter 4y ago
      Stick a pony in me pocket I'll fetch the suitcase from the van 'Cos if you want the best ones But you don't ask questions Then brother, I'm your man - Fools & Horses Theme
      • ehecatl42 4y ago
        I think it was the popularity of Only Fools and Horses that gave rise to a pseudo-Cockney slang common in my time as an undergrad. Degrees were ranked: - Geoff (Hurst) -- Class I -- "first" - Simon (leBonn) -- Class II:1 - Desmond (Tutu) -- Class II:2 - Douglas (Hurd) -- Class III "turd" (I matriculated '91. And not in London.)
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • MrsPeaches 4y ago
    Other slang terms (more commonly used in London): - “Nugget” - £1 - “Reds” - £50 (usually only used in the plural e.g. a stack of reds) - “Bill” - £100 - “Monkey” - £500 - “Grand” - £1000 - “Bag” - £1000 (from cockney “bag of sand” rhyming with “grand”)
• clort 4y ago
  interestingly, while I was living in Ireland I heard people referring to a euro as a quid reasonably commonly.
  • helsinkiandrew 4y ago
    I'm a Brit who's lived in Finland (with the Euro) for 10+ years - I occasionally say quid instead of euro. Mostly when referring to an approximate amount - such and such cost a few quid, rather than a few euro.
    • stevekemp 4y ago
      Also a Brit, living in Finland, and I do the same.
  • Tsiklon 4y ago
    This makes sense given the close history of language between the two and that pre-Euro, Ireland's currency was the Irish Pound or Punt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_pound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_pound
  • entropyie 4y ago
    Well, chances are the word comes from the Irish language (Gaeilge). Cuid. As in "Mo chuid ..." (my portion of ...). https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22239,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22...
• goodcanadian 4y ago
  A note on the guinea. IIRC, it was originally intended to be a gold one pound coin. However, the value of gold went up just when it was issued so it was revalued higher by adding the extra shilling. I imagine the extra prestige associated with it was mostly about it being gold.
  • secondcoming 4y ago
    It’s still used in horse racing.
    • dmurray 4y ago
      I've variously heard it was a 5% commission for the groom, jockey, or auctioneer. If a horse won a 100 guinea prize, the owner conventionally got 100 pounds and someone else got 100 shillings in commission.
      • bolanyo 4y ago
        I don't know about this aspect, but horse sales typically involved this type of commission. The buyer would pay in guineas (or £1.05 times the nominal purchase price) and the seller would receive that number of pounds, with the extra going to the auctioneer. I'm not sure if this system persists now, but it definitely lasted long past decimalization.
    • walnutclosefarm 4y ago
      And oddly, in auctions for farm animals. If you go to buy a bull at an auction mart, you bid guineas, not pounds.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • bolanyo 4y ago
    In fact, a shilling was defined in terms of silver ('sterling silver' gives us the 'pound sterling'), so it was a bimetallic system.
• secondcoming 4y ago
  It’s actually not unheard of that people with Scottish banknotes sometimes encounter difficulty when using them elsewhere. Small shop owners might not know that they can be accepted. It’s not so much of an issue these days since everywhere is pretty much cashless.
  • 88 4y ago
    For small shop owners it’s a vicious cycle. They don’t want to take in Scottish notes because many customers won’t want them as change. Customers don’t want them as change because a lot of shop owners won’t take them. As per the article, they’re not legal tender so no one is required to take them as payment.
    • Symbiote 4y ago
      £20 notes should rarely be needed for change. Have you had problems with Scottish £20 notes being accepted?
    • kwhitefoot 4y ago
      That's not what legal tender means. Legal tender is what must be accepted in settlement of a debt. Buying something in a shop does not involve any debt and the shopkeeper can accept or not any form of payment they like including legal tender.
  • zeristor 4y ago
    Having not used cash for three years, and seeing more places not accept cash this is less of an issue. I’ve had Scottish bank notes declined in the past though. The local Fish & Chip shops only accept cash, so it does help me to avoid eating unhealthy food, although if there was a way to find it when they’re using fresh oil they’d probably be far more tasty.
  • smcl 4y ago
    It really can vary. I remember having trouble spending Royal Bank of Scotland notes in England at the start of one trip, and after landing in Frankfurt airport for a transfer I was able to spend them without any problems in a shop which accepted EUR, GBP and USD. Also funny, here in Czech Republic I saw a money exchange place listing rates for both GBP and “SCP”, the latter having little Scottish flag beside it and a worse rate :D
• stormdennis 4y ago
  I think five shillings (20 shillings in a pound) was sometimes called a dollar because for a long time there were four US dollars to the pound.
  • bolanyo 4y ago
    A dollar is 10 shilling, or half a pound, and I believe the name goes back much further than the US dollar, to the time when various European precious metal coinages would have been recognized and converted. The Australian dollar, and perhaps others, was set equal to half a British pound at the point when they obtained their own currency.
    • taejo 4y ago
      The South African rand was indeed also introduced as half a pound in 1961 (technically half a South African pound, but that had been equal to the pound sterling except 1931-1933)
• moremetadata 4y ago
  > Luckily for those who enjoy travelling to the UK, the pound sterling has been weak in recent years, dipping as low as $1.07 in late 2022. Even still, dollars buy a lot more than they used to in the UK, so it's a great time to be travelling and shopping at British businesses. https://www.royal.uk/coronation-weekend https://www.royal.uk/coronation-weekend Dont delay, book your coronation fortnite holiday straight away and upload your hot pics to youtube! This is your chance to be part of history, captured in 8K definition by the BBC, as you line the route waving your Union flags, doffing your top hat to his majesty as he drives past you or taking a curtsey if dressed up as the fairer sex, which some men like Grayson Perry have been known to do. We'll take dictators, we'll take Jimmy Saville, we dont care as long as you spend lots of money when over here! Take part in street parties, tell us where you are from and get to rub shoulders with cockney geezer's that sound like they are straight out of a Mary Poppins adaption, Cor Blimey Guvnor, steady on, or something like Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. There's a Ronnie Pickering in every town, and if he's not driving you around the bend, you'll find him in the nearest pub. Take in a football match, there is a Gordon Parmar Hill aka The Wealdstone Raider in every club waiting to oblige you in conversation and vocabulary a five year could understand, great for those people who want to practice their English skills on the cheap. Or maybe you'd like to hunt some of the world famous Haggis in the wee hills of Scotland, its the only endangered species in the world not on the endangered species list, which some think is not offally fair game. Find out who your Scottish relatives were and kit yourself out in the family tartan whilst tasting a wee dram of whiskey from the thousands on offer? Everyone has Scottish descendants, even Donald Trump! Either way, the country is broke, and we are selling the crown jewels, so come to the UK and give us your money, its all hands on deck. Decimalisation was just a dignified slight of hand way to cover up a hyper inflationary currency collapse from the oldest currency in the world. Ignore the news that everything costs so much here especially food and heating, we are all doing fine, I'm hoping to have defrosted and come out of hibernation and be able to move in time for the coronation but at least I'm putting Stephen Hawkins speak and spell to good use communicating with the world. Remember Global Warming lowers your heating bills, so jump on a plane, and jet into the UK for a fortnight long holiday, taking in the best of British. If you fancy an unusual souvenir, we have bridges for sale, telephone boxes, and post boxes. They'll make the perfect metals investment to hand down to your kids, whilst reminding yourself of what a good time you had when you come to witness a country going mad, putting aside their differences, and showing respect to the Crown. This once in a lifetime event hinges on you attending in person, so all the press will be gushing their Levity, not drawing attention to the Age of Empires, we've all moved on from that, although Charles has been watching too much Dr Who and is stuck in a time vortex from another world. So dont delay, there will be dignitaries and politicians from around the world in attendance, it will be the best walking talking Madam Tussaud's show you'll ever see. You'll be bumping into more stars than you can see at the London Planetarium, more stars than the Royal Greenwich Observatory, where you can actually take part in time itself! But all these rare events only happen during the week before and week after the crowning of a monarch, something many countries got rid of because they thought best. And if you are really lucky, you'll find many people selling their souvenir quids and shillings that they have had tucked away safely down the back of their sofa. The money is worthless, but your kids or grand kids, could melt them down in years to come for the precious metal content, or keep them as a souvenir before cryptocurrency's took over the world. Remember London is the only Govt backed crypto currency laundromat in the world! So come and invade for two weeks only, the Empire that gave you English before the Americans bastardised it, and take part in the world's biggest fancy dress party!
• smcl 4y ago
  Just to add some more niche currency slang. A few of the Hibs casuals[0] that used to come into the pub I worked at sometimes referred to pounds as “sheets” - “it set me back fifty sheets” = “it cost me 50 pounds”. I don’t know how common it is, I only heard it around these guys. [0] - Hibs = Hibernian Football Club in Edinburgh, casuals = hooligan supporters (who were alright with me so long as they thought I supported a nothing-team like Montrose and didn’t know I actually supported Aberdeen :D)
  • Underphil 4y ago
    I'm from the Midlands and have heard that many times.
• bell-cot 4y ago
  10,000-foot geezer's perspective: Before the Great War (WWI), Great Britain was rich, Great Britain completely dominated the financial world, Great Britain's Pound Sterling was the world's reserve currency ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency ), and the Pound Sterling was no more decimal than Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria was Japanese. When you are the 900 pound gorilla, not only can you get away with all sorts of unique complexity - mites, farthings, groats, shillings, florins, crowns, pounds, guineas, etc. - but being quite conversant with your complexity is a point of pride for many foreigners, who wish to be seen as educated and sophisticated. WWI might reasonably be described as a "no matter how hard it is, no matter how long it takes" suicide pact by Europe's greatest nations and nobles, to destroy their own positions and prestige in the world. They were quite successful in that. Great Britain's post-WWI economic policy might be described as "keep saying 'Great', but don't think nor try too hard". Combine that with interest payments on their huge war debts, and the writing was on the wall. Then came WWII. Before the U.S.A. stepped in to pay for things, national bankruptcy was at least as much a threat to "Great" Britain as the Nazi armies were. More than a year before that war ended, on 22 July 1944, Britain formally signed the Bretton Woods Agreement ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_System ) - which explicitly made the U.S. Dollar the world's reserve currency. Post-WWII, "Great"-no-longer Britain's economic situation was grim. Rationing of food, for the general population, did not end until 4 July 1954. Still, the funny old Pound Sterling currency system hung on. I mostly credit human memory. Brits born in 1895 would have adult memories of pre-WWI British Greatness, yet be only 70 years old in 1965. Finally, 15 February 1971 was Decimal Day - when the cool old farthing/groat/shilling/etc. British Pound was converted to the dull, conformist "100 pence to the pound" modern system.
  • tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    Nice summary. Tradition dies hard, especially in these isles - my old nan maintained that decimalisation was the greatest con ever perpetrated on the British people!
    • bell-cot 4y ago
• vaughan 4y ago
  I never heard of "smacker", but now I understand where "smackeroos/smackeroonies" comes from in Aus.
• rubans 4y ago
  Here's a good video about coins https://youtu.be/jRDOmgJyznI https://youtu.be/jRDOmgJyznI
• dhanush13181 4y ago
  [flagged]
• blackshaw 4y ago
  Fun fact: the 20p and 50p coins are Reuleaux heptagons[0]. This means that they have a constant diameter even though they're not circular, which means that they can be accurately sorted by vending machines. [0] https://wikiless.org/wiki/Reuleaux_polygon?lang=en https://wikiless.org/wiki/Reuleaux_polygon?lang=en
  • tylerag 4y ago
    Link that has functioning CSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_polygon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_polygon
  • n1b0m 4y ago
    There’s also a Reuleaux wheeled bike [1] [1] https://youtu.be/ebRI4kFmR7U https://youtu.be/ebRI4kFmR7U
    • blackshaw 4y ago
      Damn that's cool.
    • recuter 4y ago
      I like this bike better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRmdssX9l2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRmdssX9l2g
      • n1b0m 4y ago
        That’s pretty awesome. I quite like this one too https://youtu.be/PX3A7GLtFqM https://youtu.be/PX3A7GLtFqM
  • I_complete_me 4y ago
    And of course "How to drill a square hole" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5AzbDJ7KYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5AzbDJ7KYI
  • wyclif 4y ago
    Looks like the OP is 403.
• Havoc 4y ago
  Slightly easier explanation is that a quid is used the same way the word "bucks" is used for USD.
• denton-scratch 4y ago
  A thruppny bit (three-penny piece) was my favourite coin. It was a brassy colour, different from every other coin - not coppery, and not silvery. It was quite heavy - it felt like wealth. It had twelve sides - the only sterling coin that had sides, until the introduction of the 50p bit, with decimalisation. The other thing I liked about it was that three is such a crazy denomination for a currency token, like a three-dollar bill; three old pennies were heavier and bigger, but the old pennies were ridiculously large and heavy. I also liked florins and half-crowns. A florin was a two-shilling piece, and a half-crown was two-and-a-half shillings. These were coins that actually contained silver. A crown was five shillings, but not generally used as currency, it was issued as a memorial, like a medal. At one time I owned a Churchill Crown, issued to commemorate Churchill's death. They were big, heavy coins. That's why a half-crown was two-and-a-half shillings.
  • dspig 4y ago
    thruppny bit is also ryhming slang, but in the other direction
• winrid 4y ago
  The first time I visited England when I was 19 the people I was visiting showed me all this, and consequently a lot of my cash was turned into "shrapnel". Later I wanted to buy some vodka, and someone wanted chocolate milk, so imagine the look on the cashier's face as I pay for ONLY vodka and chocolate milk with spare change.
• sircastor 4y ago
  We had a get together with our international team this past summer, and I was shocked to learn from a Scottish colleague that some banks are authorized to print their own currency notes. I thought "That can't be right". Though this is historically what many banks throughout the world used to do. It just seemed totally crazy that a private corporation could distribute nationally accepted currency. What a weird, wild world we live in... > Scottish banknotes are a funny thing because they're not issued by a central bank, and they're not technically legal tender ANYWHERE in the UK. Three retail banks (Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank, and Royal Bank of Scotland) are permitted to print notes, and they're classified as promissory notes rather than legal tender. Go to the ATM of any of those banks, and you'll get their notes.
  • forgotusername6 4y ago
    They are of course a right pain if you accidentally get one given to you in change down south. Plenty of shops will refuse them.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  My favorite money has always been the guinea because it set the profit for middlemen. You would pay the auctioneer in guineas (21 shillings) and they would pay the seller of the item in pounds (20 shillings), giving the auctioneer a 4.75% commission.
• _dain_ 4y ago
  A better explanation is Lindybeige's video about pre-decimal British coinage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paSGQRwvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paSGQRwvo It goes into the underlying mindset behind this seemingly bizarre system. Basically: - the penny was always the fundamental unit. every denomination was defined in terms of the penny, not the pound or the shilling. It wasn't like the modern system where the fundamental unit is the pound (or dollar) and pennies (or cents) are defined as hundredths. - the system was evolved, not designed - different multiples and fractions of the penny went in and out of fashion at various times, so at any given time the system wasn't quite complicated as you might think, even though in retrospect it can be hard to keep track of every denomination from every period - the shilling (12 pence) and the pound (240 pence) stuck around and became important denominations because those are highly-composite numbers and so have lots of ways of splitting them up And this isn't stated explicitly in the video but it seems the system lost its value due to inflation, not any desire for metrication. Nobody gave a damn about pennies by the late 60s. You could very well make a new version of "old money" with modern coinage, just inflated by a factor of 100. A neo-shilling = 12 dollars, etc. Could be a fun cyberpunk worldbuilding detail.