[UK] Slang question

I don’t doubt it :wink: but perhaps we move in different social circles.

A tenner is ten (obviously.)

A lobster is twenty, due to the red colour.

A pineapple, by extension, is a fifty.

A bob is the old name for a shilling and two bob for a florin, which converted metrically to ten and twenty cents respectively.

A tanner was threepence (I think) and a zac was sixpence and about the size of the five cent piece.

a"bar" in investment banking terms means a cool “million”.

**Are you sure? ** When there were twenty shilling in a pound why would a shilling or a florin be “metrically converted to ten cents and twenty cents respectively”??

To the extent the terms are still used in the UK they would be 5 pence and 10 pence metric respectively. And a tanner in the UK was six pence - half a shilling. There was the three pence piece but it was simply called a thripennybit if anything. Then the coinage went penny, ha’penny and farthing (1/4 of a penny - after the bird on the back).

Of course things could well be different in Oz but just surprised and thought worth checking…

We will leave guineas, crowns and halfcrowns to another time - as even further away from the OP than we are already. :wink:

When Australia converted to dismal guernsey, the exact conversion was:

1 pound > 2 dollars
10 shillings > 1 dollar
1 shilling > 10 cents
6 pence > 5 cents

For amounts not an exact multiple of 6 pence, there were aproximate conversions, e.g., the base domestic postage rate of 5 pence converted to 4 cents. (This was a long time ago … it’s now 50 cents, including 10% GST).

Depends whether you consider a pound to be equivalent to a dollar or two - the ABS and the Treasury considered a pound equivalent to two dollars. Also, the sizes of the respective coins were very similar.

ABS

The threepence was a trey. I dunno where I got tanner from.

Aussie slang

More Aussie Slang

Actually, some people called it a Joey (FYI)