solidus

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The Word of the Day for November 24 is:

solidus   \SAH-luh-dus\   noun 
     1 : an ancient Roman gold coin introduced by Constantine and used to the 
fall of the Byzantine Empire
    *2 : a mark / used typically to denote "or" (as in and/or), "and or" (as in 
straggler/deserter), or "per" (as in feet/second)

Example sentence:
     In her latest thriller, the author manipulates her readers into believing 
there are two killers until the final page, where she connects their two names 
with a solidus.

Did you know?
     Call it a solidus, or call it a slash/diagonal/slant/virgule -- whatever 
you call it, you are bound to run into this useful mark with some regularity. 
These days, one place the mark is commonly seen is in Internet addresses 
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl, for example), but the history 
of the word "solidus" takes us back to a time well before computers. The 
ancient Roman emperor Constantine the Great borrowed the Latin term for "solid" 
("solidus") for the gold coin that was the successor to the aureus. And in 
Medieval Latin, "solidus" designated the shilling. Before the introduction of 
decimal coinage, abbreviations of the shilling ("s," "sh," or "shil") were 
used. Eventually, the abbreviations were replaced with the simple symbol "/," 
which became known as a solidus. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.