Qirsh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small unit of money equal to one hundredth of a pound in Egypt and certain other Arab nations
2. A minor coin or currency denomination, the piastre, used in parts of the Middle East and North Africa
3. The subdivision of the Egyptian pound and similar currencies, worth a fraction of the main unit

Etymology: The Arabic "qirš" originally meant "shark" (the fish), and it became a coin name because of a metaphorical link to the animal's name: in the Ottoman and wider Arabic-speaking world, the word came to refer to a silver coin. The coin name has a distinctive family of cognates across Europe, which is why "qirsh" is a doublet of several familiar currency words: "kurus" (the Turkish unit of the lira), "grosz" (Polish), "groschen" (German), and "grush" (an Anglicised form). These words all descend from the same source but entered different languages through different routes, so a single Arabic word has ended up scattered across several European currencies. In English, "qirsh" is an alternative form of "qursh," a unit of money in Egypt and the Levant. Its spelling varies because transliterating Arabic into the Latin alphabet has no single standard, and the form with a "q" simply reflects the Arabic letter qāf.

Synonyms: piastre, piaster