SIMOLEON \suh.MOW.lee.un\. n. an old US slang term for one dollar

In early eighteenth-century Britain, the small silver coin whose proper name was sixpence was often slangily called a simon. We’re not sure why, but a plausible origin lies in the name of Thomas Simon, a famous seventeenth-century engraver at the London Mint who designed some new coins after the Restoration in 1660, including the sixpence. (A New Testament reference, to St Peter “lodging with one Simon a tanner”, led to the coin later being called a tanner instead.) Simon seems to have been taken to the USA and transferred to the dollar coin (the name is said to have been recorded in the 1850s). Having in mind the much more valuable French gold coins called Napoleons, some wit bundled simon and Napoleon together and made from it simoleon.

Although the word is not used much nowadays, it is considered well known enough to appear in newspaper crossword puzzles from time to time. The crossword clues for this word have typically been things like [Clam], [Buck], or [Smacker], which follow the tradition of using slang in a clue to indicate that the answer is also slang.

Simoleon has the obscure anagram OINOMELS. Oinomel is a variant spelling of OENOMEL, pronounced \EE.nuh.mel\, which is a sweet ancient Greek beverage of wine mixed with honey.

BROCKAGE \BROK.ij\ n. a particular type of misprinted coin

I figured that just like in stamp-collecting, botched coins would often be highly sought after collectors’ items too, so I did a bit of research. Naturally, I was on the lookout for some cool words in the process…

A brockage is what results when a pressed coin fails to exit the press when the next blank planchet enters the press to be struck. The coin that fails to exit the press is usually stuck to the hammer die (typically the reverse), and is known as a “cap” because of the form it assumed (like a bottle cap). So, when the new blank planchet is struck, the obverse side is struck with the normal obverse die, but the reverse side is struck against the “cap” (the coin that did not exit from the press correctly). So, you end up with a correctly struck coin obverse and an incuse mirrored image of the obverse on the reverse side of the coin. This is known as a brockage.
— Australian Threepence

I think it’s fun to work out auxiliary definitions from contexts like this, but just in case you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick summary…

PLANCHET n. a blank metal disc prepared to be stamped to make a coin
OBVERSE n. the primary or ‘heads’ side of a coin
INCUSE v. (of a coin) to mark with a stamped impression (also adj.)

The coin in the picture at the top of this post would be called an obverse brockage, because the ‘heads’ side of the coin is repeated on the reverse side as an incuse mirror image.

NGULTRUM \eng.GUL.trum\ n. the basic monetary unit used in Bhutan

This sound, or PHONEME more technically, is referred to as the velar nasal and is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol ŋ (which is a bit like the Greek letter ETA, you might recall). This symbol in turn is often called the ENG or AGMA.

The ngultrum is pegged at a value of one Indian RUPEE and is completely interchangeable with that currency unit. Like most decimal currencies it is further subdivided into 100 units, each called a CHETRUM. Below is a Bhutanese coin valued at 10 chetrums. This coin isn’t used very much anymore, but it’s too interesting-looking not to show you one…

DENARIUS /din.AIR.ee.us or din.AR.ee.us/ n. an ancient Roman coin pl. DENARII

The word denarius comes to us from the Latin phrase ‘denarius nummus’ which literally means ‘coin worth ten asses’. And so it was too. But not the kind of asses you’re thinking of! And not the other kind either. Asses here refers to the plural of an AS, which was the name of a small copper coin, also used by Romans at the time.

The denarius is the direct antecedent of the penny, which replaced it in the early 8th century. Ever wondered why the penny is represented by the symbol ‘d’, even though it starts with a ‘p’? Well, now you know ;-)

Once the penny hit the scene, it seems everyone jumped on the bandwagon and started using penny-sounding names for the coin that formed their basic unit of currency. In addition to the Germans and Danzigonians (?) who introduced the PFENNIG you met yesterday, for example, the Finnish brought in the PENNI (pl. -S or -A). There were others too, but I’m not allowed to talk about them in front of Scrabble players.

Speaking of Scrabble, both denarius and denarii (its plural) are high-probability bonus words, so you really should take a moment or two to learn them, if you haven’t already. If you’re wondering how you would ever spot DENARIUS from a scrambled rack, just remember that it is an anagram of the much easier-to-find UNRAISED. It is also an anagram of URANIDES (certain radioactive elements), but that’s probably just as tricky to spot.

To the best of my knowledge, today’s word has never appeared in a major American newspaper crossword puzzle, but if you’ve spotted it in one I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

P.S. Collins/CSW/SOWPODS players might also be interested to meet the ANTONINIANUS, a coin which was brought in to replace the denarius and was valued at 2 denarii…