a group of mainly Commonwealth countries that used sterling as a medium of international payments and sometimes informally as a currency against which to peg their own currencies. For these purposes they deposited sterling balances and held gold and dollar reserves in the Bank of England
Also called: sterling bloc, scheduled territories
sterling area in American English
an association of countries that peg the value of their currencies to that of the British pound sterling, as esp. between 1931 and 1972