A dialectal or archaic term for a false coin or counterfeit money, particularly in Scottish usage.
From fause (false) with the suffix -en, following Scottish patterns for creating nouns. It literally means 'a false thing,' applied specifically to fraudulent currency in medieval and early modern Scotland.
In times when coins were literally bits of precious metal, a fausen could get you severely punished—some 16th-century Scottish records show people having their ears cut off for counterfeiting!
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