Shilling

The shilling is a unit of currency formerly used in the United Kingdom and other British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, and from there back to Old Norse, where it means "division", and in fact many Norse influenced countries use the term too.

Slang terms for the old shilling coins include "bob" and "hog".

One abbreviation for shilling is s (for solidus, see £sd). Often it was informally represented by a slash, standing for a long s or ſ, thus 1/6 would be 1 shilling and sixpence, often pronounced "one and six" (and equivalent to 18d; the shilling itself was valued at 12d). A price with no pence was written with a slash and a dash: 11/–. Quite often a triangle or (serif) apostrophe would be used to give a neater appearance, such as 1'6 or 11'–. In Africa, it is often abbreviated sh.

During the Great Recoinage of 1816, the mint was instructed to coin one troy pound (weighing 5760 grains) of standard (0.925 fine) silver into 66 shillings, or its equivalent in other denominations. This effectively set the weight of the shilling, and its subsequent decimal replacement 5 new pence coin, at 87.2727 grains or 5.655 grams from 1816 to 1990, when a new smaller 5p coin was introduced.