The shilling's a unit of currency used in current and former Commonwealth countries, and continued to be used in countries that left the commonwealth, such as Ireland and Tanzania. The word's thought to derive from the base skell-, "to ring/resound", and the diminutive suffix -ing. The abbreviation for shilling's s, from the Latin solidus, the name of a Roman coin. Often it was informally represented by a slash, standing for a Long s: for example, "1/6d" meaning 1 shilling and sixpence (often… (More on Shilling)