Etymology: < French coin wedge, corner; also die for stamping money or medals; ‘also, a coyne, or stamp, vpon a piece’ (Cotgrave). (So called, because the die had the form or action of a wedge.) French coin ‘wedge’, in Old French also coing , cuigne = Provençal cunh , conh , Spanish cuño , Portuguese cunho , Italian conio < Latin cuneum (nominative cuneus ) wedge. Godefroy has also Anglo-Norman coigne (feminine), the ‘coin’ with which money is struck, and coined money. Formerly spelt indifferently coin , coign , quoin (with many variations); but the spelling coin , though still occasional in all senses, is now appropriated to the sense ‘money’; in the senses ‘wedge’, ‘corner-stone’, etc., the spelling is generally, though not always, quoin n.; coign n. is retained in the Shaksperian phrase ‘coign of vantage’, and is occasional in that of ‘wedge’.

Etymology: < Old French coignier, cungner to ‘strike’ or stamp money, to mint, to coin (still in Cotgrave), < coin stamp, die, coin n. In English, with the changed sense of the noun, the notion, when analysed, became ‘to make coin, make into coin’.

Etymology: < French coignier (3rd singular coigne ) ‘to put in a corner’ (Godefroy), ‘to wedge, to fasten with a wedge, to drive hard or knock fast in, as with a wedge’ (Cotgrave). Etymologically, the same word as coin v.¹ (the primary sense of both being ‘to wedge, to strike’); but not consciously connected with it in English. Now usually written quoin v.