Bar

Origin of: Bar

Bar

British slang for a pound sterling dates from the late 19th century. Eric Partridge maintains it comes direct from the gypsy word bar deriving in turn from the Romany word bauro meaning heavy or big, which the Victorian sovereign coin certainly was in those days. Until the 1960s, bar still meant a pound and half a bar was ten shillings, but currently bar has come to mean very much more than a pound. Today the expression is commonly used by financial traders in London and elsewhere to refer to a million pounds or other currencies.