An S-shape with one or two vertical lines crossing it completely.

$ appears to have evolved ca 1775 in the United States from a common abbreviation for pesos, also known as piastres or pieces of eight, a P/raised-S ligature P^S that passed through a stage resembling ֆ.[1] It was used in the US before the adoption of the dollar in 1785.[2]

$

1. Abbreviation of money.
   • 1954, Donald's Diary

     Uncle Ray's Loans

     We lend $$

2. (used everywhere except in the Philippines) Abbreviation of peso.
3. Abbreviation of dollar.
   • 1977, advertisement page in Uncanny X-Men, #106, page 8

     Fool all your friends. You'll get a Million^[sic] $$ worth of laughs with these exact reproductions of old U. S. Gold Banknotes (1840).

4. Abbreviation of escudo.

$

1. A substitute for the letter S, used as a symbol of money or (perceived) greedy business practices.

   "Micro$oft Window$"

   • 2015, "Pixtopia", season 1, episode 6b of Star vs. the Forces of Evil

     [the text below is written on-screen in large letters, once Marco reveals his "emergency cash stash"]

     Marco'$ emergency ca$h $ta$h

$

1. (programming) Prefix indicating a variable in some languages, like Perl, PHP, shell scripts.

• English: $DEITY

When used as a currency symbol, $ precedes the number it qualifies (in English), despite being pronounced second. For example, “$1” is read as “one dollar” not “dollar one” unlike the usage in languages such as French or German: “1 $”, “2,50 $”. When used for the Portuguese escudo, $ is placed between the escudos & centavos, 2$50.

Currency signs

Formerly used currency signs