florin
/ˈflɒrɪn
/noun
1A former British coin and monetary unit worth two shillings.Material possessions and the means of measuring them by reference to groats, shillings or florins were forbidden in the Holy Parish....
- No more will the devil's mouthwash flood their coffers with shillings and florins.
- The record price of €127,000 was paid for an Anglo-Irish 1642 gold coin at Whyte's in 2000 and in the same year a 1943 florin, the two shilling piece, fetched €20,000.
1.1An English gold coin of the 14th c., worth six shillings and eight old pence.The innovation of Edward III's reign was the introduction in 1344 of gold coins - a florin, half-florin, and quarter-florin....
- And six coins were recovered including a florin, a sixpence, two pennies and two half pennies.
- In 1363, for example, Bindo Benini donated to the monastery a relatively modest sum of 120 florins in order to help defray construction and decoration costs of a burial chapel in the chapterhouse.
2A foreign coin of gold or silver, especially a Dutch guilder.Vallo believes these people, led by El Libre, will easily pay 50,000 gold florins for the huge stash of weapons....
- The Dutch offered 5,000 troops and 50,000 florins per month.
- The currency is the Netherlands Antilles florin or ‘guilder ‘, with an exchange rate fixed to the US dollar: Naf1.75 = US $1.’
3The basic monetary unit of Aruba, equal to 100 cents.Though the dollar dropped against the florin in our three-year window, it fell by just two cents, from 1.79 to 1.77....
- Your zarpe to wherever will cost you 25 florin.
- They have their own Aruban paper and coin florins and won't accept NAfs from Bonaire or Curaçao.
Origin
Via Old French from Italian fiorino, diminutive of fiore 'flower', from Latin flos, flor-. The word originally denoted a gold coin issued in Florence, bearing a fleur-de-lis (the city's emblem) on the reverse.