£

See also: Appendix:Variations of "l"

£ U+00A3, £ POUND SIGN ← ¢ [U+00A2] Latin-1 Supplement ¤ → [U+00A4]

￡ U+FFE1, ￡ FULLWIDTH POUND SIGN ← ￠ [U+FFE0] Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms ￢ → [U+FFE2]

Translingual

Etymology

From the first letter of Latin lībra (“pound”). The symbol is derived from the mediaeval tradition of placing a stroke over a letter or letters of a word (in this case L) to indicate an abbreviation; when letters have ascenders like L, the stroke frequently passes through that ascender. £ is thus cognate with the pound sign #, which was similarly derived from lb with a stroke through the ascenders.

Symbol

£

1. pound sterling
2. various other currencies called pound or lira.
   • 2007, Dave Lee (jazz musician), Nothing Rhymes with Silver 2‎^[1], page 78:

     Flanders was able to flog his piece of land, for which he had originally paid £4,000, to one of the largest gold-mining corporations for something like a couple of million smackers.

Derived terms

The practice of placing a stroke through the initial of the name for a currency as a symbol for that currency has been extended to other currency symbols, including several shown below.

See also

• £sd (pounds, shillings and pence)
• £B (Bristol pound)
• ₤ (lira)

Currency signs

• ¤ – currency wildcard
• ؋ – afghani
• ฿ – baht
• ₿ – bitcoin
• ¢ – cent
• ₡ – colón
• ₵ – cedi
• – cifrão
• – Emirati dirham
• $ – dollar
• ₫ – dong
• ֏ – dram
• € – euro
• ƒ – florin, guilder, gulden
• ₣ – franc
• ₲ – guarani
• ₴ – hryvnia
• ₭ – kip
• ₾ – lari
• ₺ – Turkish lira
• ₼ – manat
• ₥ – mill
• ₦ – naira
• ₱ – Philippine peso
• £ or ₤ – pound, lira
• ﷼ – Iranian rial
• – Saudi riyal
• ៛ – riel
• ₽ – ruble
• ₨ – rupee
• ₹ – Indian rupee
• ₪ – new shekel
• ⃀ – Kyrgyzstani som
• ₸ – tenge
• ₮ – tugrik, tether
• ₩ – won
• ¥ – yen, yuan

Language-specific currency signs

• ৳ – Bengali rupee sign
• ৲ – Bengali taka sign
• ৹ – Bengali ana sign
• ৻ – Bengali ganda sign
• રૂ૰ – Gujarati rupee sign
• ꠸ – North Indic rupee sign
• रू (rū) – Nepali rupee sign
• රු (ru) – Sinhala rupee sign
• ௹ – Tamil rupee sign
• 𞱱 – Urdu rupee sign
• 𞋿 – Wancho rupee sign
• ރ – rufiyaa (in Dhiveli)
• 円 – yen (in Japanese)
• 元 – yuan (in Chinese)
• 圓 / 圆 – yuan (in Chinese)

Formerly used currency signs

• 𐆚 – Roman as
• ₳ – austral
• ₠ – European Currency Unit
• ₢ – cruzeiro
• 𐆖 – Roman denarius
• ₯ – drachma
• ₶ – livre tournois
• ℳ – mark
• ₧ – peseta
• ₰ – pfennig
• 𐆘 – Roman sesterce
• ₷ – spesmilo
• – old Israeli shekel

Latin

Etymology

A cursive sigma 𐆒 for semis with a cross-bar

Symbol

£

1. Alternative form of 𐆘