Sceat
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A small Anglo-Saxon coin, especially one made of silver; sometimes regarded as a weight (and thus a comparative measure of a coin's value). historical
"1840, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, Volume 2, Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom, unnumbered page, In the Anglo-Saxon laws there is no passage from which the value of the ‘sceat’ can be ascertained with certainty, though from some places in the laws of Ethelbirht it would appear, that, in Kent at least, 20 sceats were equal to 1 scilling."
Example
More examples"1840, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, Volume 2, Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom, unnumbered page, In the Anglo-Saxon laws there is no passage from which the value of the ‘sceat’ can be ascertained with certainty, though from some places in the laws of Ethelbirht it would appear, that, in Kent at least, 20 sceats were equal to 1 scilling."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Old English sceatt.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.