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Glite Dictionary
British pound sterling

British pound sterling

2.7
A unit of money used in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland equal to 100 pence
  • noun
  • /ˈbrɪtɪʃ paʊnd ˈstɜːlɪŋ/
translation icon : libra esterlina
  • When traveling in London, you'll need to exchange your currency for British pound sterling.

Examples

  • I paid for my coffee with a British pound sterling.

  • The contract specifies that all payments must be made in British pound sterling rather than euros.

  • The British pound sterling rose against the dollar after the latest economic report was released.

  • The British pound sterling has been strong against the euro.

  • The price of the new gadget is listed as 499 British pound sterling.

  • He exchanged his dollars for British pound sterling before traveling to London.

  • The British pound sterling has been stable against the euro for several months.

Synonyms

pound
vsBritish pound sterling
  • UK
220 1.0

The money used in the United Kingdom and some other countries

is official only for the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland
sterling
vsBritish pound sterling
68 4.2

Money used in Britain, especially the pound

focuses on the specific monetary unit rather than the general currency
quid
vsBritish pound sterling
  • UK
39 8.6

A British name people use for one pound

is the formal official name not used in casual speech
British pound
vsBritish pound sterling
4 1.2

Money used in the United Kingdom worth 100 pence

is the precise legal name emphasizing country and denomination
pound sterling
vsBritish pound sterling
  • UK
2 3.4

The main money unit used in the United Kingdom equal to 100 pence

has identical meaning but is the full formal two word name

Surface Forms

British pound sterling singular
British pound sterlings plural

Morphology

British + pound + sterling

The phrase is directly compositional: 'British' locates the item in the UK and 'pound'/'sterling' both denote the UK currency unit, so a learner who knows those constituents will infer it refers to the UK's money. This follows a common noun-modifier pattern found across languages and contains no idiomatic shift, making the meaning immediately derivable.

Etymology

British pound sterling comes from old money: a pound was once a pound weight of silver, and one popular story says sterling was the name for the good, trusted silver brought by traders from the east called 'Easterlings'. So the name came to mean the British 'money'.