Categories: History

The Origin of the US Dollar Sign

A QUESTIONABLE SYMBOL

So frequently do we and our children grow up and go through our lives speaking, reading, and writing a language whose every word we frequently never analyze, never question, never ask whence that word originally came. One such word – or couplet of words – are the words “United States” and their curious evolution into a symbol that many of us write every day: the dollar sign “$.

For those of you who are not easily taken to memorizing specific dates and the names of people around which events took place, I will put aside all of these details and merely explain the simple origin and evolution of the dollar sign.

THE DOLLAR SIGN

While there seems to be some dispute over the true origin of the dollar sign, one explanation is sometimes attributed to America’s association with Spain through sea trade. For the longest time, Spanish money was accepted as common currency in the new worlds. Many coins were stamped with the Spanish coat of arms surrounded by the two Pillars of Hercules. The two columns “||” are then bound by an S-shaped ribbon (see IMAGE 2). These two pillars and ribbon are then collectively considered the origin for the pictograph “S” covered by two hash marks, thus the original US Dollar sign. This in turn was later shortened to a single hash mark sign used today: “$”.

A seemingly more acceptable explanation also flies in favor of the side of patriotism and utter simplicity.

As we know, the United States is a relative youngster among other countries. The innovation by which the early Americans lived was marked by swift changes in lifestyle and language. New words sprung up in America which were never seen originally in other parts of the world – words which denoted cultural phenomena that took place in America and nowhere else in the world.

Foods such as pizza and chop suey, although they are typically associated with the Italian and Chinese cultures respectively, actually originally appeared (along with their names) for the first time in the United States.

The key words here are United States.

Upon the founding of the US, the founding fathers wished to create a currency unique and specific only to the New Land. Perhaps out of a drive for convenience over any artistic creativity, the American dollar currency was originally denoted as the abbreviation for United States, or just plain old “US” (see image accompanying this article).

Somewhat in an effort to make the short phrase “US” easier to write, the letter “U” was elongated and superimposed over the letter “S”, thus signifying the original version of the American dollar symbol as a unique currency (see IMAGE 1). One modern-day remnant of this old-time symbol might still be found in convenience stores. Walk up to the service counter and ask to see the metal-topped chewing tobacco tins for US Tobacco chewing tobacco products. Embossed across the top of the tin cover on older tins is the original form of the popular US dollar sign with the looped U bottom. As time goes on, it seems these metal tins have gone over to “plastic tins” affixed with ano longer bearing the old US with the looped U bottom.

Later on the bottom loop of the letter “U” was dropped, and thus we have the letter “S” superimposed by two hash marks originally signifying the letter “U” (see image).

Later these two hash marks were reduced even further to just one stroke, and thus we have the dollar sign “$” we see commonly used today.

EXAMPLES OF THE EVOLUTION OF OLD-TO-NEW WORDS

Aside from the example of the dollar sign, we see similar transformations in other words of the English language.

The other countries, from which many American ancestors originally came, are a collective wellspring from which also flowed many traditions. Some of these traditions show up as eccentricities peculiar to the English language.

One such traditional word that shows up in our everyday household language is the word breakfast – a word which harkens back to America’s ancient Middle Eastern roots and is frequently alluded to in the Bible as “the breaking of a fast. In modern times this phrase has now been conveniently shortened to breakfast.

Likewise we see this in other words such as:
• Christmas – Originally “Christ’s Mass” or “Christ Mass”.
• Halloween – Originally “All hallows eve”, a night dedicated to all the saints.

Have fun exploring words!