“1 mite = 1/8 penny,
1 farthing = 1/4 penny,
2 farthings = 1 halfpenny (pronounced more like “haypenny”),
2 halfpence = 1 penny (or a ‘copper'),
2 pence = 1 tuppence or a half-groat,
3 pence = 1 thruppence,
4 pence = 1 groat,
6 pence = 1 sixpence (a ‘tanner'),
12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob),
2 shillings = 1 florin ( a ‘two bob bit'),
2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown,
5 shillings = 1 Crown“
What's the problem ;)
Joking-aside, it's amazing to me that anyone ever got fluent with this. My dad and grandparents never complain about the pre-decimalisation period so I guess you just get used to it.
I think I'll stick to learning the category theory mentioned by op over this.
It's no more complicated than measurements and weights in the imperial system.
We're a weird country. We decimalised our currency, our weights and measures in shops and science, but we can't let go of imperial measures. Amongst the general population, people are far more comfortable talking about miles and miles per hour, than kilometers. Land sizes are still measured in acres and hectares. If you ask anyone their height, you'll probably get an answer in feet and inches, but ask their weight and they're more likely to tell you in kilograms rather than pounds and stone.
Some years ago I was a carpenter in the UK. From what I can see this has changed little since then... If I were laying out for sheet materials...mdf or plasterboard came in metric sizes 2400x1200mm so joists or studs went at 400mm centres. If I were laying out for plywood it came in 8x4ft sheets so I would use 16 inch centres.
If I were measuring a space to cut something to fit I would use inches or feet and inches, 23 an 1/8, for instance.
I might need a small hole about 1/8 of an inch, open my drill box and select a 3mm.
If I were ordering timber I might ask for a 3 metre length of 4x2. As in 4x2 inches! If 3m were too long you might prefer an 8ft length. The yardman would walk you straight to the 2.4m pile without hesitation. Of course timber lengths are in 300mm increments to align with the feet of old. When you got your despatch note it would say something like 2400x100x50. Or perhaps they used regularised timber and it would have been machined down to 97×47 which may or may not be mentioned on the ticket. It would still be called 4x2 whatever!
Thing is, none of this caused us any trouble whatsoever. Well.. apprentices who learnt cm at school (which was NEVER used in construction) had a fun few weeks at the beginning.
I had engineers use all the same terms to me verbally, but never in their written work which were always in mm
A lot of those things are not actively measured but are more experiential or used as an approximation. Height in feet is about how tall someone is, not their exact height. A mile to the pub is about how long it will take to walk, not the exact distance. Younger Brits will tend to use these terms in conversation but revert to metric more when something actually needs to be measured.
I don't recognize the 'vibiness' of imperial length and distance measurements at all. Perhaps this is a pareidolic interpretation which came to you when you noticed people using both sets of measurement types?
> A mile to the pub is about how long it will take to walk, not the exact distance. Younger Brits will tend to use these terms in conversation but revert to metric more when something actually needs to be measured.
Doesn't this get confusing when all traffic and road signs, car instruments, etc. are in miles and miles per hour?
People who are into running/cycling use "K" a lot, personally I think it's because once someone starts talking in km, if you use miles your stats will look bad by comparison. I know trackers/apps probably had this as default from the start because Europe=metric but so did a lot of satnavs and it didn't change our language in the same way.
It's rare to need kilometres in engineering, but I know from a friend that works at Network Rail that everything is done in kilometres, except final conversions on many older railway lines where the mileposts still measure miles.
Those small blue signs at the side of motorways, and the white emergency location posts, both use kilometres.
Yeah, the thing with imperial units and engineering is that once you get anywhere near mass, weight, force, energy, and all the related units for same, it can get very confusing and error prone. So are we talking pounds-mass, pounds-force, or slugs? (The latter being something that probably no one who didn't take engineering/physics/etc. classes has ever heard of.)
What's amazing is how we mix the two. Case in point, my wife and I are both runners, she measures her pace in minutes per mile, I use minutes per km. When we exchange stats we have to do the conversion. She does it as her running club uses the mile convention. This is despite the fact that we're doing 10 km races. So you're running a 10 km and talking about a '7 minute mile'?!
Distances on road signs are still in miles and speed limits are still in mph, so familiarity with miles reflects their official status, not just British weirdness/quaintness.
And also, unlike the weirdness of pre-decimal currency or some of our more obscure weights and measures units, the miles we talk about are rough approximations that aren't supposed to be subdivided or converted into anything precise (or anything more precise than "about half a mile") so there's no particular advantage to using an SI unit
I still find it easier to assess my body weight in stones and pounds (14 pounds, one stone). I'm currently about 13 stone 7lb. I have no idea what my weight is in kilos.
I think they didn't. It is a mix of colloquialisms of different origins (one farthing is "one fourth-ing" said too many times) but some might have been localized versions, etc or just used in specific situations.
So I'm pretty sure most people knew some of those but not all of them.
But if you think about it penny/nickel/dime etc is also confusing. Less confusing but still. Just tell me I'm 15 cents short or something like that.
I'm not sure there's a whole paragraph in this article without an error, omission or oversight.
Mite doesn't have a standard definition. My unabridged Oxford dictionary says it was just a very small amount of money, and people gave it various definitions.
Copper means any copper coin, it's never been specific to a one penny coin. Currently it means the copper-coloured coins, 1p or 2p.
Groats as coins worth four pence were last issued in 1662, and according to the OED later 4 pence coins were called fourpence or fourpenny bits/pieces, including in casual speech.
Most of the words are straightforward fractions or multiples of a penny, with optional slurred pronunciations:
¼ penny = farthing
½ penny = halfpenny or ha'penny
1 penny, usually abbreviated as 1d
2 pence = tuppence
3 pence = thruppence, thre'penny bit
4 pence = fourpence piece, fourpenny bit
6 pence = sixpence (slang: tanner)
12 pence = 1 shilling (slang: bob)
2 shillings = 1 florin (slang: two bob bit)
2s 6d = half crown
5 shillings = 1 crown
20 shillings = 4 crowns = 1 pound
21 shillings = 1 guinea
As I understand it, normally prices and other quantities were spoken in pounds, shillings and pence unless they fitted a coin exactly. Something cost "6 shillings", not "1 crown 1 shilling" or "3 florins" etc.
Just like the USA, where a movie ticket presumably once cost a nickel, then a dime, but then 15 cents. (Although none of the old words above are in standard usage in Britain.)
They all sound pretty standard to me, with the exception of "mite". I think at one point most people would absolutely have known all of them, but there were hundreds or thousands of other regional variations that would have been less known.
I know lots of old people who are absolutely fluent with almost all these terms (excluding 'mite' and 'groat'), could reckon with them quickly and accurately, and who (when I was younger) would quickly and accurately translate decimalized amounts into shillings and pence.
Grew up in the 1960s, pre-decimal. In primary school, we learned to do arithmetic in pounds, shillings, and pence (but no longer farthings) and also learned imperial units. The coins in circulation at the time were 1/2d, 1d, 3d, 6d, 1/- (1s), 2/-, and 2/6d. There was also a 10/- banknote. Some prices were in guineas (21/-).
They stopped minting groats (4d) after 1856 (except in Maundy money), half-farthings after 1870, and farthings after 1956. Farthings and silver thrupnies (3d) were still around but not in circulation.
The florin (2/-, or a tenth of a pound) was introduced during the first attempt at decimalization in 1849.
Crowns (5/-) were never in circulation, but were minted for special events such as coronations. They still are, but their face value is now £5.
Decimalization began in 1968 with the introduction of 5p and 10p coins (same size and value as 1/- and 2/- coins) followed by the 50p coin (10/-) in 1969. It was completed in 1971 with the introduction of the 1/2p, 1p, and 2p coins.
From secondary school onwards, it was decimal money and metric/SI units, which simplified calculations a bit.
Ireland decimalized at the same time as UK, and Australia and New Zealand a few years earlier (at the rate of two dollars to one pound).
Eh, it's not that complicated. It is just pounds, shillings, and pence. The rest are mostly just terms for coins that existed at various times, roughly equivalent to nickel, dime, quarter. Some of them are even slang terms (quid, bob) similar to buck or two bits.
As mentioned here, you will often see historical prices quoted as £x ys zd ... which might lead to the question "why is a penny abbreviated to d"?
In fact, the £ sign is a stylized letter L, and the system is really Lsd: libra (meaning, amongst other things, pound in Latin), solidus, denarius. This is the Carolingian monetary system and, as the name suggests, goes back to the Holy Roman Empire - as early as the 8th century.
That includes the L 1 = 20 s = 240 d ratio that made its way to pre-decimalization British currency.
People can accustom themselves to all kinds of unpleasantness and even grow fond of it, but the truth is that it is mental overload which might cause unnecessary errors.
If a Crown was an hour, a mite would be 7min and 30sec.
You could call 24 Crown and a Drown and 360 of those would be a Yawn.
Throw in 5 or 6 extra Drown every Yawn, and you'd add a Drown to the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 11th Shawn of the Yawn, but subtract two Drown from the second Yawn, if you're electing a president, and then only subtract one, cuz Merica!
I assume that is how people that are only familiar with metric view the imperial measurement system. 1/64, 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 9/16, 5/8, 11/16, etc. for inches. 1 inch = 1/12 foot, 2 inches = 1/6 foot, etc. I use all of these so often on woodworking that it is super easy for me. I presume that same was for money in the pre-digital age.
> it's amazing to me that anyone ever got fluent with this.
Twelve (pence to the shilling) is actually quite a convenient way of denominating money. Twelve has more divisors than ten, which makes a lot of calculations easier. It wasn't so hard to learn the basics - 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound; a child could do it. But working out 17.5% VAT on a transaction in decimal coinage isn't so much fun.
What's the problem ;)
Joking-aside, it's amazing to me that anyone ever got fluent with this. My dad and grandparents never complain about the pre-decimalisation period so I guess you just get used to it.
I think I'll stick to learning the category theory mentioned by op over this.