Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
* Pigeon [Wed, 29/01/2003 at 18:22 +] British phones had a # key on the keypad for several years before the exchanges were upgraded to the point where you could actually do anything with it. When this happened, the recorded help/instruction messages were at something of a loss as to what to call it. The key you've been ignoring for the last 10 years was no good, because that applied to * as well. They settled on square for a while, which I think is unquestionably the most revolting term I've heard for this symbol. They mostly call it hash now. In France, we call it the sharp key (dièse in French), coz the sign is also used in musical notation (internationally I think). -- Jean-Marc Chaton, Infra Team, IBM Paris Lab -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 09:59, Jean-Marc Chaton wrote: * Pigeon [Wed, 29/01/2003 at 18:22 +] British phones had a # key on the keypad for several years before the [snip] symbol. They mostly call it hash now. In France, we call it the sharp key (dièse in French), coz the sign is also used in musical notation (internationally I think). M$ calls C# C-Sharp... So I assume the 'sharp' name is international... even though I also call it 'hash' or in dutch 'hekje'. Mark -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Pigeon wrote: 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. Some more wacky fun facts about British money. The d abbreviation for penny comes from the Latin denarius which was the standard coin of the Roman empire. During the middle ages Britain also used the mark which was equivalent to 13s 4d (160d) During, Victorian times there was also a coin called the florin which was 2 shillings. Guinea comes from the region of West africa also known as the gold coast (modern Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone) A pound sterling is so-called because it was originally the value of a pound of sterling silver. sterling comes from Easterling which is what German Hanseatic merchants were called during the middle ages. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED] La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 04:16:43PM -0500, David P James wrote: Pigeon was roused into action on 2003-01-29 13:38 and wrote: How the British came to pronounce lieutenant leftenant, I still don't know. The American pronunciation lootenant is surely much closer to the original - French, presumably. My guess is that the British (and proper Canadian) pronounciation of lieutenant came from the fact that it would have been spelled levtenant or something similar at some point in the past (there used to be no difference in script between 'u' and 'v'). This probably would have been reinforced by the notion of a left hand man. There is no equivalent in English that I can think of to the French pronounciation. The best I can come up with is 'lee-uh' for the lieu portion, so really not all that similar to the American (if it is closer it's by accident). Far more likely for the American is the German 'loy' or 'loi' beginning. Sorry, me being sloppy. I should have said lootenant follows the usual rules of mangled pronunciation used by a native English speaker reading French and pronouncing it English style, so in lieu becomes in loo or in liew, very rarely in lee-uh. But as you say, it's pretty much what would happen to Leutnant as well. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:08:29AM -0500, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: A pound sterling is so-called because it was originally the value of a pound of sterling silver. sterling comes from Easterling which is what German Hanseatic merchants were called during the middle ages. I need to read less fiction and more history; to me an easterling is someone from beyond the Sea of Rhûn :-) -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:56:26AM -0600, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:08:29AM -0500, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: A pound sterling is so-called because it was originally the value of a pound of sterling silver. sterling comes from Easterling which is what German Hanseatic merchants were called during the middle ages. I need to read less fiction and more history; to me an easterling is someone from beyond the Sea of Rh?n :-) Doesn't work; I haven't read it for over 10 years, but easterling still means the same to me as to you! Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 10:56, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:08:29AM -0500, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: A pound sterling is so-called because it was originally the value of a pound of sterling silver. sterling comes from Easterling which is what German Hanseatic merchants were called during the middle ages. I need to read less fiction and more history; to me an easterling is someone from beyond the Sea of Rhûn :-) Who wants to bet where JRRT got easterling from -- +---+ | Ron Johnson, Jr.mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Jefferson, LA USA http://members.cox.net/ron.l.johnson | | | | Fear the Penguin!! | +---+ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +, Pigeon wrote: 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? :) 1 pound = 240 (old) pennies 1 pound = 100 new pennies 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 so (old) 1 pound/quid was 20 shillings/bobs, each of which was 12 pence/pennies, for a total of 240 pence/d; a crown would have been 4bob+12d (60d, or 1/4quid, also 15 thrupenny). (old) 1quid= 20bob= 240pence 1£ = 20s = 240d right? Guinea = 1 pound 1 shilling. 1guinea = 1£+1s = 21s = trés bizarre Sovereign = Gold coin worth one pound 1sovereign = 1£ how'm i doin'? and the new system has much less romance: 1£ = 100p, woo hoo (no bob?) it's a shame our ancestors didn't use base dozen [3x4]. then the fraction 1/3 would be a nice .4 (and .6 would be a nice half, .3 would be one fourth)... alas, ten engenders much more difficult math. at least hours and minutes use a very workable base 60... 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?) two people separated by a common language, remember. :) americans tend to call things by almost anything but their proper name (at least i seldom get it right)-- and then expect the rest of the world to just understand... (here in the american midwest it's as if no other nation ever existed!) sometime in the last decade there was a big push to submit names for the # button on the phone, here... pound was apparently the winner. hash-mark, number-sign (we're #1!), grid, etc... -- I use Debian/GNU Linux version 3.0; Linux server 2.4.20-k6 #1 Mon Jan 13 23:49:14 EST 2003 i586 unknown DEBIAN NEWBIE TIP #24 from Will Trillich [EMAIL PROTECTED] : Curious about DISK PARTITIONING schemes? That's a frequent topic at debian-user -- look for it in the archives at lists.debian.org or read Karsten's approach at http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/partition.html Also see http://newbieDoc.sourceForge.net/ ... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:31:58AM -0600, will trillich wrote: On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +, Pigeon wrote: 1 pound = 240 (old) pennies 1 pound = 100 new pennies 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 so (old) 1 pound/quid was 20 shillings/bobs, each of which was 12 pence/pennies, for a total of 240 pence/d; a crown would have been 4bob+12d (60d, or 1/4quid, also 15 thrupenny). You wouldn't tend to say x bob and ...; x shillings and y pence was usually pronounced x and y or x and ypence, so a crown would have been four and twelvepence, except that 12d == 1s, so a crown was actually five shillings. Quid tends not to be used with fractions. Five quid, yes; 1/4 quid, no. Oh, and neither bob nor quid normally takes an s in the plural. and the new system has much less romance: 1? = 100p, woo hoo (no bob?) I think I might have heard bob still used for 5p, but I wouldn't swear to it. The term's sometimes still used by older people to refer to an unspecified small amount of money. I don't fall into that category, though; I just about remember ha'pennies before they were abolished in 1984. -- Colin Watson [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 22:32, Colin Watson wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:31:58AM -0600, will trillich wrote: On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +, Pigeon wrote: 1 pound = 240 (old) pennies 1 pound = 100 new pennies 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 so (old) 1 pound/quid was 20 shillings/bobs, each of which was 12 pence/pennies, for a total of 240 pence/d; a crown would have been 4bob+12d (60d, or 1/4quid, also 15 thrupenny). You wouldn't tend to say x bob and ...; x shillings and y pence was usually pronounced x and y or x and ypence, so a crown would have been four and twelvepence, except that 12d == 1s, so a crown was actually five shillings. Quid tends not to be used with fractions. Five quid, yes; 1/4 quid, no. Oh, and neither bob nor quid normally takes an s in the plural. In Oz we used to be on Lsd also, changed in 1966. And sure it was 2 quid except when someone avered that They wouldn't be dead for quids Bob Here in Oz we use the metric system. The unit of length is the metre, unless you have a 1000 of them; then it's the mutter. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:00:20PM -0500, Stephen Gran wrote: This one time, at band camp, Charlie Reiman said: # has several names but most will be lost on non-techies. I'm not even sure why we call it the pound symbol since we Americans usually abbreviate pounds (the unit of weight) with the equally cryptic lbs. So do we Brits! And I think the French do too. They don't use kilos for everything. Due to utterly stupid EU legislation, it's now illegal to sell things by the pound in Britain, but legal in France. AARGH! Comes from the latin libra, which means, I don't know, something to do with weights or scales. Like the symbol for the astrological sign. Libra is the plural of librum, which means... pound. The many names of # that I know: The tic-tac-toe symbol Or noughts-and-crosses sign (same game, different names!) The hash The pound The octothorpe (don't ask) Just from the 8 points on it's exterior. Oddly, spelled with and without the trailing 'e' The comment character All of these names are terrible. I like hash because then the omnipresent #! becomes the hash-bang, or shebang for short. That's kinda cute... but I call ! pling, which seems sort of onomatopoeic. Hear, hear. Although I'm all for linguistic oddities that come from a mixed up history of compromises and disparate influences, myself. Kind of like linux, really. They can be a pain in the arse until you figure them out. The English word for the military rank colonel apparently swapped back and forth between French and Italian derivations, until finally settling to a French spelling and an Italian pronunciation. When I was about 5, two lads taking part in a war game baffled me utterly by telling me that they were the kernels, which I thought were grains of wheat. Now I have a directory containing various versions of the core of my Linux system which is called colonels. How the British came to pronounce lieutenant leftenant, I still don't know. The American pronunciation lootenant is surely much closer to the original - French, presumably. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:48:04PM -0600, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +, Pigeon wrote: 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?) Your '?' character worked here, though I make sure I have my locale set properly (en_US where I am, in sunny South Dakota). When the mail came back it had turned into a question mark. It displayed correctly in the editor (jed) when I typed it in. jed saved it as hex A3. It went out, and came back, and now mutt's pager displays it as a question mark; if I hit | to pipe the mail to a hex dump it's still hex A3, but when I go to jed to type a reply, now it really is a question mark (hex 3F). From the console, if I try and type a pound (money) sign at the command prompt, it appears to be interpreted as hash signreturn. Ie. it displays a hash sign, then gives me a new line, new prompt. If I hexdump the standard input, to see if it's generating 23 0A or A3, I find A3... but it displays as a pound(money) sign. WEIRD! The '#' has a crapload of names: some I know are 1) pound sign; apparently bags of dry goods used to have the number of pounds followed by the '#' sign. I learned this term back in my Apple ][ days (or daze). The phone company annoyingly calls this the pound key (yet the asterisk is the star key? Whatever). British phones had a # key on the keypad for several years before the exchanges were upgraded to the point where you could actually do anything with it. When this happened, the recorded help/instruction messages were at something of a loss as to what to call it. The key you've been ignoring for the last 10 years was no good, because that applied to * as well. They settled on square for a while, which I think is unquestionably the most revolting term I've heard for this symbol. They mostly call it hash now. PS Is there a one character symbol for a shilling? Does anyone other than the US use the '?' (cent) character? How the hell do I type a euro character? :-) Sort of. Two shillings is 2/-; two shillings and sixpence (half a crown) is 2/6. Two shillings _could_ be 2/ but 2/- was much more common. You could also write 2s. or occasionally 2s, though dropping the dot from abbreviations was much less common then than it is now. So, one character symbols were possible, but the convention was usually a two-character form. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +, Pigeon wrote: 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?) Your '£' character worked here, though I make sure I have my locale set properly (en_US where I am, in sunny South Dakota). The '#' has a crapload of names: some I know are 1) pound sign; apparently bags of dry goods used to have the number of pounds followed by the '#' sign. I learned this term back in my Apple ][ days (or daze). The phone company annoyingly calls this the pound key (yet the asterisk is the star key? Whatever). 2) sharp sign; ask a musician. I learned this one while taking violin lessons, but I've never referred to the '#' as a sharp. 3) hash; dunno what the origin is but it works for me; I tend to use this term exclusively to avoid confusion. 4) octothorpe; I guess this is the typographical name or something. I even used to know _why_, but I'm too lazy to look it up. PS Is there a one character symbol for a shilling? Does anyone other than the US use the '¢' (cent) character? How the hell do I type a euro character? :-) PPS i just used the compose key in PuTTY ... cool! -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] NEWS FLASH: Scientists decode the first confirmed alien transmission from outer space ... This really works! Just send 5*10^50 H atoms to each of the five star systems listed below. Then, add your own system to the top of the list, delete the system at the bottom, and send out copies of this message to 100 other solar systems. If you follow these instructions, within 0.25 of a galactic rotation you are guaranteed to receive enough hydrogen in return to power your civilization until entropy reaches its maximum! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
-Original Message- From: Pigeon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:14 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?] 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 # has several names but most will be lost on non-techies. I'm not even sure why we call it the pound symbol since we Americans usually abbreviate pounds (the unit of weight) with the equally cryptic lbs. The many names of # that I know: The tic-tac-toe symbol The hash The pound The octothorpe (don't ask) The comment character All of these names are terrible. I like hash because then the omnipresent #! becomes the hash-bang, or shebang for short. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On 28 January 2003 at 16:13, Pigeon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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?) I think the official name for it is 'the octothorpe'. Of course, the ascii program says: quail (fun)$ ./ascii '#' ASCII 2/3 is decimal 035, hex 23, octal 043, bits 00100011: prints as `#' Official name: Pound Other names: Number, Sharp, Crunch, Mesh, Hex, Hash, Flash, Grid, Octothorpe I think the two most common terms (at least in my neck of the woods) is pound and hash (favoring pound, it's more fun to pound stuff than hash it). -- Stephen W. Juranich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Electrical Engineering http://students.washington.edu/sjuranic University of Washingtonhttp://ssli.ee.washington.edu/ssli -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
Charlie Reiman wrote: # has several names snip . I like hash because then the omnipresent #! becomes the hash-bang, or shebang for short. I've heard #! referred to as splat-bang; I kind of like that. Kent -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:48:04PM -0600, Nathan E Norman wrote: The '#' has a crapload of names: some I know are [...] 4) octothorpe; I guess this is the typographical name or something. I even used to know _why_, but I'm too lazy to look it up. In a book I have, it gives '#' a meaning of Insert a space (the context is in revising a text). octo - eight thorp - I saw what this part means a while ago. I think it is village PS Is there a one character symbol for a shilling? Does anyone other than the US use the '?' (cent) character? How the hell do I type a euro character? :-) IIRC, it was '/'. -- Seneca [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
This one time, at band camp, Charlie Reiman said: # has several names but most will be lost on non-techies. I'm not even sure why we call it the pound symbol since we Americans usually abbreviate pounds (the unit of weight) with the equally cryptic lbs. Comes from the latin libra, which means, I don't know, something to do with weights or scales. Like the symbol for the astrological sign. The many names of # that I know: The tic-tac-toe symbol The hash The pound The octothorpe (don't ask) Just from the 8 points on it's exterior. Oddly, spelled with and without the trailing 'e' The comment character All of these names are terrible. I like hash because then the omnipresent #! becomes the hash-bang, or shebang for short. Hear, hear. Although I'm all for linguistic oddities that come from a mixed up history of compromises and disparate influences, myself. Kind of like linux, really. -- -- | Stephen Gran | I have five dollars for each of you. | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Bernhard Goetz | | http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | | -- msg27043/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue 28 Jan 2003 16:48:04 +(-0600), Nathan E Norman wrote: How the hell do I type a euro character? :-) You'd need iso-8859-15 encoding (locale en_US@euro perhaps?). Euro is 0xA4 which is ¤ (looks like a twinkly star) in iso-8859-1. Hopefully there's a suitable compose sequence if you're in the right locale. -- Cheers, Clive -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue 28 Jan 2003 16:13:56 +(+), Pigeon wrote: 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. They were bloody big coins though. 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 To add my ha'p'orth (halfpennyworth), the denominations are/were abbreviated as: p - new pence d - old pence s - shillings L - pounds - £ is a stylised L In other words our currency used to be L.s.d. -- Cheers, Clive -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
