Letter: Dollar linked to pieces of eight

Prof Maurice Pope
Thursday 19 December 1996 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Sir: The $ sign did not begin life as a river running between two banks. It started as a xenogram, a foreign word written as such but pronounced as if it were English. You wrote "peso" but you said "dollar".

"Pesos" was abbreviated as "pS", and this abbreviation was gradually formalised into the present ligature. In the same way we write pounds (an ornate L for Latin libra) but say "pound", or write & (an ornate ligature of Latin et) but say "and".

In the 18th century the Spanish peso was the most frequent high-value coin in circulation in British North America and "dollar" (from the German thaler) was colloquial English for any foreign coin of substance.

Professor MAURICE POPE

Oxford

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in