batz

See also: Batz

English

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] German Batz, Batze, Batzen (“a coin bearing the image of a bear”).

Noun

batz (plural batzes or batzen)

1. (historical) A small copper coin, with a mixture of silver, formerly current in some parts of Germany and Switzerland.
   • 1874, John Ruskin, “Letter xliv”, in Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, Orpington, Kent: George Allen, volume IV, OCLC 3852549, page 166; quoted in “Varieties. Mr. Ruskin on Railway Travelling.”, in W. H. Bidwell, editor, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art (New Series), New York, N.Y.: E. R. Pelton, publisher, 108 Fulton Street, October 1874, volume XX, issue 4, OCLC 261231920, page 510:

     In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any business at Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone; spent nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank at the streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he got to Ulverstone, "it was the end of the world." But now, he would never think of doing such a thing! He first walks three miles in a contrary direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “batz”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)