STERLING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sterling

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/stˈərlɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Sterling n. (Engin.) Same as Starling, 3.

Sterling n.

Any English coin of standard value; coined money. "So that ye offer nobles or sterlings." "And Roman wealth in English sterling view."

A certain standard of quality or value for money. "Sterling was the known and approved standard in England, in all probability, from the beginning of King Henry the Second's reign."

adjective

Sterling adj.

Belonging to, or relating to, the standard British money of account, or the British coinage; as, a pound sterling; a shilling sterling; a penny sterling; now chiefly applied to the lawful money of England; but sterling cost, sterling value, are used. "With sterling money."

Genuine; pure; of excellent quality; conforming to the highest standard; of full value; as, a work of sterling merit; a man of sterling good sense.

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Etymology of 'Sterling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sterling" Quotes from Famous Books

... which Prince Albert had striven to avoid, and that the official would be forced, as it were, on the Prince's intimacy without such previous acquaintance as might have justified confidence. It was only the sterling qualities of both Prince and secretary which obviated the natural consequences of such an ill-judged proceeding, and ended by producing the genuine liking and honest friendship which ought to have preceded the connection. The ...

— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... puts me in mind of a remarkable fact, well worth mentioning. The State of California owes me, at the least calculation, two hundred dollars, paid in sums varying from six kreutzers up to a pound sterling to hotel-keepers, porters, lackeys, and professional gentlemen throughout Europe, exclusively on the ground of my citizenship in that state. In Paris—in Spain—in Africa—in Germany (with the exceptions of the beer-houses and country inns), I had ...

— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... material, not one of the servants herein made famous or infamous, as the case may be, was employed except upon presentation of references written by responsible persons that could properly have been given only to domestics of the most sterling character. It is this last fact that points the moral of the tales here presented, if it does ...

— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... chapter on the pedigree and the early history of the Winthrop family. He is content to begin this side of those who "came over with the Conqueror," and to accept for ancestry men and women untitled, of the sterling English stock, delvers of the soil, and spinners of the fabrics of which it affords the raw material. He finds almost his own full name introducing a record on the Rolls of Court in the County ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... hallucinations with which the patient is tormented, consists in the inveterate habit of reducing all argument into arithmetical quantities; of calculating the value of all truth at some standard rate per pound sterling, of what it might possibly produce as a matter of trade; of confounding syllogisms with ciphers, and lumbering all logic into pounds, shillings, and pence. With diagnostics of disease so unmistakably developed, it would only be exasperation of the symptoms ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine -- Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

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