Re: USAGE: Currencies and -s

On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Raymond Brown wrote:

> And, hey - what's this with the 18th century?
>
> In places where we kept the old pounds, shillings (20 shillings = 1 pound)
> & pence (yes _pence_; 12 pence = 1 shilling, 240 pence = 1 pound), crowns
> were still minted in the 20th century!  I have some about somewhere round
> the house.
Quoth A.E. Housman (1859-1936):

# When I was one-and-twenty
# I heard a wise man say,
# "Give crowns and pounds and guineas
# But not your heart away;

A guinea, of course, is a money of account worth 21 shillings; I
don't know when they were last actually coined.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
"[O]n the whole I'd rather make love than shoot guns [...]"
        --Eric Raymond