On Fri, Jul 1, 2016, at 21:13, Steve Nickolas wrote: Not "Solidus"? (Along with its counterpart, the reverse solidus)

On Friday, 1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote: For some definition of "proper". But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the French word for comma, and OED states: A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the same value as the modern comma). In modern context, it might apply equally to \\. Clearly that has even more capacity to confuse. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

Nemo scripsit: A solid argument, worth at least a shilling. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org It's like if you meet an really old, really rich guy covered in liver spots and breathing with an oxygen tank, and you say, "I want to be rich, too, so I'm going to start walking with a cane and I'm going to act crotchety and I'm going to get liver disease. --Wil Shipley

On Thursday, 7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: This was, of course, also the origin of the word "shilling". The OED entry is interesting. Finally we have clarity! From now on it's only (without shouting) solidus and reverse solidus. No confusion any more, at least not for those in the know. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

On Thursday, 7 July 2016 at 22:40:47 -0700, scj(a)yaccman.com wrote: That takes real talent. You've made me locate my Report (not Revised Report). It's surprisingly dog-eared. I'll go through it and see what I can find, but for the moment section 2.2 seems appropriate. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

On Friday, 8 July 2016 at 13:09:12 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: You don't quote your source, but the blue Duden (paraphrased for non-German speakers) makes it clear that "Strich" comes from an Ablaut form of "streichen", itself derived from the root "Strahl", originally meaning "arrow". So ultimately, it seems, you have the choice of being struck or shot. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

Steffen Nurpmeso scripsit: "Striking the sails" in technical English. All the nations around the North and Baltic Seas exchanged their vocabularies like diseases, and if we didn't have records of their earlier histories, we would know they were related but we'd never figure out exactly how. For example, it can be shown that French bateau, German Boot, common Scandinavian båt, Irish bád, Scottish Gaelic bàta, Scots boat, and the equivalents in the various Frisian languages are none of them original native words: they all were borrowed from English boat. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

On 11 July 2016 at 07:20, Tony Finch <dot(a)dotat.at> wrote (in part): Here is the full OED entry for solidus and the start of that for shilling. (Apologies to those whose displays do not show all the glyphs used.) solidus Pl. solidi (ˈsɒlɪdaɪ); also 5–7 solidos. [L., a substantival use of solidus (sc. nummus) solid a. The form solidos is the L. acc. pl.] 1. a.1.a A gold coin of the Roman empire, originally worth about 25 denarii. †b.1.b A shilling. 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) II. 313 Gentil men hade rynges, and oþere hadde solidy þat were hole and sownde. 1432–50 tr. Higden (Rolls) VII. 301 Kynge William toke this yere of every hyde of grownde in Ynglone vj. solidos of silver. 1487 in Paston Lett. III. App. 463, I bequeith to the reparacion of the stepull of the said churche of Saint Albane xx. solidos. 1609 Bible (Douay) 1 Chron. xxix. 7 And they gaue‥of gold, fiue thousand talentes, and ten thousand solidos. 1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Solidus, an entire or whole piece of Gold-Coin, near the Value of our old Noble or Spur-Royal; but it is now taken for a Shilling. 1860 C. R. Smith in Archæol. Cant. III. 38 The solidi of the Eastern Empire were commonly imitated in France under the Merovingian princes. 1885 Athenæum 24 Oct. 541/2 Mr. Webster exhibited‥a gold solidus of Constantius. 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6, in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a shilling-mark. Also attrib. Cf. oblique n. 5. 1891 in Cent. Dict. 1898 G. Chrystal Introd. Algebra i. (1902) 3 The symbols / (solidus notation) and : (ratio notation) are equivalent to ÷. 1905 F. H. Collins Author & Printer s.v. 1909 Athenæum 27 Mar. 379/1 The last‥have been quick to adopt the use of the solidus or slanting line instead of the horizontal bar in writing fractions. 1923 N. Shaw Forecasting Weather i. 35 A solidus (/) such as occurs in the combination ‘bc/r’ separates weather at the time of observation from the preceding weather, bc/r thus indicating ‘fine or fair after rain or drizzle’. 1947 [see non-linear a. b]. 1971 Archivum Linguisticum II. 4 Johnson/Jenkinson's ‘oblique dash’‥, which is otherwise called a ‘solidus’ or ‘virgule’. shilling (ˈʃɪlɪŋ) Forms: 1 scilling, scylling, (-ingc), 3 ssillinge, 3–6 schillinge, 4 ssyllyng, 4–5 schillyng(e, schelyng(e, shulleng(e, schullyng(e, 4–6 schiling, shill-, shyllyng(e, -inge, silling, 4–7 schilling, 5 schyllynge, shylynge, schilenge, silyn, 5–6 sheling, -yng(e, shellyng(e, 6 scheling(e, schillengge, shealinge, shyllyn, syllyng, 4– shilling. [Common Teut.: OE. scilling masc. = OFris. skilling, skilleng, schilling, MDu. schellingh (Du. schelling), OS. scilling (MLG. schillink, schildink, mod.LG. schillink, schilling), OHG. scilling, skillink, schilling (MHG., G. schilling), ON. skilling-r (Icel. also skildingr, SW., Da. skilling), Goth. skilliggs:—OTeut. *skilliŋgo-z. Adopted in OSlav. as skŭlęzĭ, in Sp., Pr., Fr. as escalin (13th c. F. eskallin, mod.F. also schelling), It. scellino. The Teut. word is referred by some etymologists to the root *skell- to resound, ring (see shill a. and v.1). Others assign it to the root *skel- to divide (whence skill v., shale n., shell n., etc.); some have conjectured that the word originally denoted one of the segments of fixed weight into which an armlet of gold or silver was divided, so that they might be detached for use as money. In the bilingual documents of the 6th century, Goth. skilliggs corresponds to the L. solidus; in mediæval Germany the Teut. and the Latin word were commonly used to render each other, but in England the correspondence appears to have been only occasionally recognized until Norman times. The value of the ‘shilling’ in continental Teut. countries has varied greatly; its relation to the penny and the pound has also varied, though a widely accepted scale was 1 pound or libra = 20 shillings or solidi = 240 pennies or denarii. See schelling, schilling1, skilling2.] 1. a.1.a A former English money of account, from the Norman Conquest of the value of 12d. or 1/20 of a pound sterling. Abbreviated s. (= L. solidus: see solidus1), formerly also sh., shil.; otherwise denoted by the sign /- after the numeral. No longer in official use after the introduction of decimal coinage in 1971, but still occas. used to denote five new pence. Before the Norman Conquest the value of the shilling varied in different times and places. It was 5 pence in Wessex and 4 pence in Mercia; the shilling of 12 pence mentioned in two passages c 1000 may refer to the continental solidus. [...remaining 100 lines omitted...]