Brush up on your sterling... Edna - Ottawa ~~ Pounds, shillings and pennies Prior to decimalisation in 1971, British currency was represented by the old English 'Pounds, Shillings and Pence' or 'LSD'. The 'L' denoted the £ pound-sign; strangely 'D' or 'd' denoted the pence, and coincidentally 'S' denoted shillings, since shilling was not the origin of the S. The £ and L symbols were derived from Latin 'libra', like the Zodiac sign of the weighing scales, and literally from 'libra' (also shown as 'librae') the Latin word meaning a pound weight, from Middle English (weight, as you will see, related closely to monetary value). The penny 'D' in LSD, and also lower case 'd' more commonly used when pence alone were shown, was from 'Denarius' (also shown as 'denari' or 'denarii'), a small and probably the most common silver Roman coin, which loosely equated to one day's pay for a labourer. S of course was associated with shilling but originally derived from the Roman coin 'Solidus' (prior to 1387 in English translations shown as 'Solidy', and also shown more recently in English as 'Solidi' and 'Solidii', being Latin plural versions). The Solidus was originally an Imperial Roman coin introduced by Constantine (c.274-337AD), so called from the full Latin 'solidus nummus', meaning solid coin. The symbols of the pre-decimal British money therefore had origins dating back almost two thousand years.