What is the origin of the dollar?

One of the most esoteric origin stories links it back to the Bohemian thaler, which featured a serpent on a Christian cross. That itself was an allusion to the story of Moses winding a bronze snake around a pole in order to cure people who’d been bitten. The dollar, so it’s said, derived from that sign.

What does the dollar sign mean?

Read all of the year's biggest hits here. The dollar sign is among the world’s most potent symbols, emblematic of far more than US currency. It’s shorthand for the American dream and all the consumerism and commodification that comes with it, signifying at once sunny aspiration, splashy greed and rampant capitalism.

What currencies use a dollar sign?

The dollar sign is also used for several currencies that use different names, including the Brazilian real, the Mexican peso, the Nicaraguan córdoba, and the Macanese pataca. The dollar sign takes as its base the form of the capital letter S. A vertical line bisects the S. Less commonly, two vertical lines are used in place of one.

What is the difference between a dollar and a cent?

The dollar’s baby sibling, the all-but-worthless cent, is logically represented by a lowercase ‘c’ with a line through it, but there’s no ‘D’ in the dollar sign. If you had to find letters lurking in its form, you might spy an ‘S’ overlain with a squeezed, bend-less ‘U’ providing its vertical strokes.