In the para. 2 of vol. 1 of his "History of England," David Hume writes: "I was born the 26th of April, 1711, old style, at Edinburgh." Does "old style" refer to the calendar, to the birth, . . . ?

It is the method of reckoning dates by the Julian calendar.

"When the Pope Gregory revised the calendar in 1582, a certain number of days were omitted from the calendar at a particular time, resulting in two separate styles of dating. England persisted in using the "Old Style" until 1752, because of religious differences. The Old Style also often dated the beginning of the year from March 25 rather than January 1, and this area of the site takes this difference into account. Thus March 8, 1735, Old Style is really March 19, 1736 in the New Style! Occasionally, particularly in dating material between 1582 and 1755 or so, it becomes necessary to convert back and forth."

I believe that's referring to the calendar change about that time that added eleven days, to rectify "equinox creep" that happened before astronomers realized that 365.25 was not the exact number of days in a year. It was corrected by having leap year be observed on even-century years ONLY if they were divisible by 400, as opposed to all other years which require being divisible by 4. The accumulated error also had to be corrected, though, hence the eleven-day jump forward.

As you can imagine, arbitrarily skipping eleven days like that caused all kinds of problems, and not everyone took the change graciously. The old and the new calendars ran side by side for a while in different localities, sometimes adjacent geographically but eleven days apart.

Edit: You beat, by five minutes So where's the button that says "A new post has been added to this thread since you looked last - you may wish to check before you post!"

Since I don't know the publication date, I wonder if he was referring to the style then no longer current, or addressing an international audience in English., which leads to another question. Around when did Latin stop being coine among European scholars?

Around when did Latin cease being coine among European scholars?

I have seen late 19th century dissertations in Latin, but I believe the rise of nationalism and the vulgar tongues happened during the 17 century. Could be wrong; just a guess.

What's coine, please?

EDIT: apologies to the threadnodists; this should have been a reply re: insel., but once again I unthinkingly clicked on Reply in the bottom post.

Koine Greek was a dialect of Classical Greek which became the common language of the larger Hellenistic world. It is the Greek in which the New Testament is written. The term "koine" came to mean any dialect of language which becomes a language in its right.

Cool! Thanks, Father Steve. I do know koin...uh oh, I don't know how to spell it: it is pronounced something like koh-ih-no-nee-uh (koinonia?); it means community, anyway, right?

P.S.--Is koine where we got "coin" a word?

I assume coine is a typo for koine. It means 'common' in Greek and is used as the name of the Greek dialect (or amalgam of dialects) commonly spoken throughout the Eastern Mediterranean after the conquests of Alexander the Great (died 323 BC). Literary figures imitated the usage of the classical writers of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, but koine is what people actually spoke. It is the language the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and the New Testament are written in.

Is koine where we got "coin" a word?

Koine is, as others have said, from Greek and means common or vulgar (in the old sense). It's pronounced coy-neigh. Coin is from French coing 'wedge' from Latin cuneus 'wedge' (whence English cuneiform).

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Is koine where we got "coin" a word?

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Nuncle is, of course, right, but your guess is a popular mistaken notion.