Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English scilling (masculine) = Old Frisian skilling, skilleng, schilling, Middle Dutch schellingh (Dutch schelling), Old Saxon scilling (Middle Low German schillink, schildink, modern Low German schillink, schilling), Old High German scilling, skillink, schilling (Middle High German, German schilling), Old Norse skilling-r (Icelandic also skildingr, Swedish, Danish skilling), Gothic skilliggs < Germanic *skilliŋgo-z. Adopted in Old Slavonic as skŭlęzĭ, in Spanish, Provençal, French as escalin (13th cent. French eskallin, modern French also schelling), Italian scellino.The Germanic word is referred by some etymologists to the root *skell- to resound, ring (see shill adj., shill v.¹). Others assign it to the root *skel- to divide (whence skill v.¹, shale n.¹, shell n., etc.); some have conjectured that the word originally denoted one of the segments of fixed weight into which an armlet of gold or silver was divided, so that they might be detached for use as money. In the bilingual documents of the 6th century, Gothic skilliggs corresponds to the Latin solidus n.¹; in mediæval Germany the Germanic and the Latin word were commonly used to render each other, but in England the correspondence appears to have been only occasionally recognized until Norman times. The value of the ‘shilling’ in continental Germanic countries has varied greatly; its relation to the penny and the pound has also varied, though a widely accepted scale was 1 pound or libra = 20 shillings or solidi = 240 pennies or denarii . See schelling n., schilling n.¹, skilling n.²