bajocco

English edit

From an archaic spelling of Italian baiocco, from baio (“brown”), after its color.

bajocco (plural bajoccos or bajocchi)

(archaic, historical) A coin, originally copper, later silver, issued by the Papal States from the 15th century to 1865. In the 19th century the value was five hundredths of a lira.
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
  I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples, preaching to a pack of good-for-nothing honest lazy fellows by the sea-shore, work himself up into such a rage and passion with some of the villains whose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience could not resist it; and they and the poet together would burst out into a roar of oaths and execrations against the fictitious monster of the tale, so that the hat went round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy.

coin issued by the Papal State