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The pound sign (£) is the symbol for the pound unit of sterling – the currency of the United Kingdom and its associated Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories and previously of Great Britain and of the Kingdom of England. The same symbol is used for other currencies called pound, such as the Egyptian and Syrian pounds.
The symbol # is known variously in English-speaking regions as the number sign, [1] hash, [2] or pound sign. [3] The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a ligatured abbreviation for pounds avoirdupois – having been derived from the now-rare ℔.
The pound is the main unit of sterling, [4] [c] and the word pound is also used to refer to the British currency generally, [7] often qualified in international contexts as the British pound or the pound sterling. [4] Sterling is the world's oldest currency in continuous use since its inception. [8]
The English word "pound" derives from the Latin expression lībra pondō, in which lībra is a noun meaning 'pound' and pondō is an adverb meaning 'by weight'. 1 2 The currency's symbol is '£', a stylised form of the blackletter 'L' ( ) (from libra), crossed to indicate abbreviation. [ 3 ]
A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned. A symbol may be positioned in various ways, according to national convention: before, between or after the numeric amounts: €2.50, 2,50€ and 250.
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in both the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement.Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces. [1]
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The British pound sterling and Irish pound were among the last to be decimalised, on 15 February 1971. In places where £sd was used, there were several approaches to decimalisation: The pound remained the base unit (in Malta, using the Maltese name "lira"), but was subdivided into new fractional units of 1 ⁄ 100 of a pound.