Numismatics

Das Gepräge is the word this list turns on, because it has two senses and the subject needs both of them. At the mint it is concrete: the design and lettering the dies leave in the metal, so a coin can have ein scharfes Gepräge or a blurred one. In educated everyday German the word has come loose from the metal and means the character something bears, as in Der Krieg gab dem Jahrzehnt sein Gepräge. A numismatist reads both at once. The image on a coin tells you who held das Münzregal; der Münzfuß, das Feingewicht and the traces of die Münzverschlechterung tell you what the times were like. Read the first sense and you learn how a coin was made; read the second and you learn why it looks the way it does.