Oxford.
_Cross and Pile_ (Vol. vii., p.487.).--Here is another explanation at least
as satisfactory as some of the previous ones:
"The word _coin_ itself is money struck on the _coin_ or head of the
flattened metal, by which word _coin_ or _head_ is to be understood the
_obverse_, the only side which in the infancy of coining bore the
stamp. Thence the Latin _cuneus_, from _cune_ or _kyn_, the head.
"This side was also called _pile_, in corruption from _poll_, a head,
not only from the side itself being the _coin_ or _head_, but from its
being impressed most commonly with some head in contradistinction to
the reverse, which, in latter times, was oftenest a cross. Thence the
vulgarism, _cross or pile, poll, head_."--Cleland's _Specimen of an
Etymological Vocabulary_, p. 157.