Groschen, Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Ausgrabung U5, 564 – 798, Vorderseite

Groschen is the (sometimes colloquial) name for various coins, especially a silver coin used in parts of Europe such as France, some of the Italian states, England, various states of the Holy Roman Empire, among others. The word is borrowed from the late Latin description of a tornose, a grossus denarius Turnosus, in English the "thick denarius of Tours". Groschen was frequently abbreviated in old documents to gl, whereby the second letter was not an l (12th letter of the alphabet), but an abbreviation symbol; later it was written as Gr or g.