> I can't speak for the whole of the last two centuries, but certainly > current American bills and coins do not use either symbol. The bills > in common use say ONE DOLLAR, FIVE DOLLARS, TEN DOLLARS, and TWENTY > DOLLARS; the coins say ONE CENT, FIVE CENTS (the name "nickel" is > informal), ONE DIME, and QUARTER DOLLAR. The bills are also marked > using digits.
In my limited experience, that word DIME has done more to confuse furriners than anything else about the U.S. and Canadian monetary systems. The dime is the smallest coin in the set physically, weighing less than half as much as a nickel, and made of (apparently) the same material, yet worth twice as much. The etymology tracing the word "dime" back to Latin "decem" ("ten") is lost on those who have not grown up with the system, and obvious to those who have.
Many monetary systems have coin sizes and weights that are based on the traditional precious or semi-precious metals once used. The nick- name for the nickel gives that away, associating it with a different metal than the (presumably once) silver-based dime/quarter/silver dollar based series.
You are correct that often the different series use metals of different color, such as the post-war German Mark, which had a 50 pfennig piece that was smaller than the Groschen (10 pfennig), the former being silver colored.
For users of many others systems where this apparent 'inversion' of the size/value relationship is part of the system, the only confusing thing is the color of the nickel - but once you learn its name, it all makes sense.
A./
