[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at
Mon Jul 11 21:20:31 AEST 2016


Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> >>
> >> solidus 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.
>
> This was, of course, also the origin of the word "shilling".  The OED
> entry is interesting.

Not quite.

"Shilling" comes from Germanic schilling and Gothic skilliggs.

The name solidus for / comes from the Roman coin solidus, as in the Lsd
notation where / separates the solidi from the denarii.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shilling
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=solidus

Tony.
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