The pound note is just an IOU. It promises to pay the bearer on demand a pound in weight of coinage. Coinage was originally transacted in weights. Often a mixture of coins did not weigh exactly a pound or half a pound, in fact they often had to split a coin to make the mixture of coins weigh exactly what was required. To make the splitting of a coin easier, certain coins where stamped with a cross. This enabled a coin to be split easily in half or quarters. This cross was likened to a star, the coins where soon nicknamed 'starlings', this word eventually evolved to what we now know as STERLING. English coins where split into four, each quarter was nicknamed a fourthing or fourling, this word evolved into FARTHING. Many foreign coins had more elements to their stars and their coins where split into eighths, hence the term PIECES OF EIGHT. A lot of these coins where of Hispanic origin and the term associated with these coins developed in the American version of English which is where the Americans get the term 'TWO BIT THIS' or 'TWO BIT THAT' from. Many people think the term 'wedge' is a recent slang term or relatively modern term, this is not the case. When a coin was split into quarters or eighths the shape was of a wedge and this is where the term comes from.
