British shilling
- noun
- Archaic
:
chelin británico
- The British shilling was replaced by the decimal system in 1971.
Examples
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She found a British shilling at the bottom of an antique box.
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My grandfather collected old British shillings as a hobby.
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I found a British shilling!
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The British shilling is now a historical currency.
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My grandfather collected old British shillings as a hobby.
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She found a British shilling at the bottom of an antique box.
-
The British shilling was replaced by the decimal system in 1971.
Synonyms
35
9.9
An old British coin worth one twentieth of a pound before 1971
4
9.9
An old British coin worth one shilling
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward adjective + noun composition: 'shilling' names the coin/unit and 'British' specifies its origin, so together they denote the British coin called a shilling. This is a directly compositional and cross-linguistically transparent pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would understand the meaning.
Etymology
British shilling comes from an old word for a small coin that showed a 'part' of a larger sum. One shilling was twelve pence, or 'one twentieth of a pound'. So the British shilling was the small coin people used to pay parts of a pound before Britain changed to a new money system in 1971.