scilling
scilling
Old English
“The shilling — twelve pence, one-twentieth of a pound — was the middle denomination of English money for a thousand years, and its name may come from a Proto-Germanic word meaning 'to divide,' because the shilling was how you cut a pound into usable pieces.”
Scilling in Old English comes from Proto-Germanic *skillingaz, possibly from *skel- (to cut, to divide). The word is cognate with Old Norse skillingr, Old High German skilling, and Gothic skilliggs. If the 'cutting' etymology is correct, a shilling was originally a cut portion — a divided piece of a larger unit. The word appeared in Germanic languages long before England had shilling coins; it was used as a unit of account, a way of naming amounts, before any coin carried the name.
The English shilling as a physical coin was first minted under Henry VII in 1487 — called a 'testoon' (from Italian testone, big head), it bore the king's portrait in profile. The shilling was worth twelve pence, and twenty shillings made a pound. This twelve-twenty system (12d = 1s, 20s = 1L) persisted for 484 years, until decimalization in 1971. The system was not arbitrary: twelve divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, and 6, making mental arithmetic easier than a decimal system for everyday transactions.
The shilling traveled with the British Empire. East African shillings, Australian shillings, Irish shillings, and West Indian shillings circulated throughout the colonies. When these territories gained independence, some kept the shilling: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Somalia still use the shilling as their primary currency unit. The English coin name became an African currency name. The colonial money outlived the colony.
In British slang, a shilling was a 'bob.' 'Lend me a bob' meant lend me a shilling. The word 'bob' died with decimalization, but 'shilling' persists in East African currencies, in historical writing, and in phrases like 'not the full shilling' (meaning not entirely sane). The dividing-word divided English money for a millennium and then divided itself between history and survival.
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Today
Shilling is the currency of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Somalia. In Britain, the word is historical — nobody under fifty has used a shilling. In East Africa, it is everyday vocabulary, spoken millions of times daily.
The Germanic word for dividing became an English coin, became a colonial export, became an African currency. The word outlived the empire that spread it. The shilling is still dividing — just not in England anymore.
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