I am an American currently living in Sweden and I have just used the expression, "He counts every single penny he has." I said this even though there are no pennies in Sweden and I was actually talking about Swedish money, the Kronor. My Swedish friend had a problem with the word "penny".
Just as Americans have a generalized term for the 100 parts a dollar can be broken down into (cents), a Swedish Kronor can be broken down into 100 parts called an "öre". After explaining that Americans have little "nicknames" names for all of the coins that can make up the dollar: penny, nickel, dime, quarter, etc... (are there more? What's a sawbuck?), my friend said that there aren't such nicknames for the different coin demoninations for (and of) the Kronor. There exists a 1-öre (not in circulation anymore since it is about the same value as a tenth of a penny), 50-öre, 1-kronor, 5-kronor, and 10-kronor coins. Not one of them has a nickname like the nickel, dime, etc...
My question is: Where did these names for American coins come from? I could easily be convinced that the nickel became the "nickel" since (at one time?) it was cast out of the metal nickel, but where do the others come from? Ok, ok a quarter is not so difficult to figure out either. So I guess that my question really is: Where do the words "penny" and "dime" come from?
-john
I don't know the answer to your question, but it will be enlightening to read the comments that come in. However, I do have this to offer:
Christmas is coming;
The goose is getting fat.
Please to put a penny
in an old man's hat;
Please to put a penny
in an old man's hat.
If you've no penny,
a ha-penny will do.
If you have no ha'penny
then God bless you.
If you have no ha'penny
then God bless you.
That is such a pretty little round to sing with a group of fairly good singers.
Mostly not slang:Penny probably from an old word meaning a piece of cloth
it's been in the language as a coin name since before
the beginning
Nickel As you suspected, from the metal
Dime It means one-tenth, from Latin decimus
Slang:
Fin Five dollar bill, from Yiddish finf, five.
Sawbuck From the Roman numeral X, the shape of a sawbuck or sawhorse.
Hi, wonnderboy, and welcome aBoard.
"Penny" has been in Englsih usage as the basic coin for a very long time indeed - long before we started to colonise the New World. My guess is that the word came over with the colonists and became stuck in the language.
The other possibility is that it has evolved from the German "pfennig" (it has a common root with penny) but I think the first is the most likely
more slang,
2 bits-- from spanish pieces of eight, that were cut into 8 peices! so 2 bits is = to 2/8th or 1/4 or a quarter!
those same peices of eight, gave use the term dollar..
(spanish gold coin was used by many trader/people, and was used in many states both before and after independance, for the first 20 years or so. )
C note = $100--from roman numeral C for 100
and are we sticking to "proper" slang for coins?
if not:
moolah
scratch
loot
green stuff
folding stuff
dead presidents
- - and, of course, "bread", from the cockney rhyming-slang, bread-and-honey
(The King was in the counting house,//counting out his money,// the queen was in the parlour,// eating bread-and-honey,// ...")
Aha! I knew I just read this somewhere. I've been reading back issues of Take Our Word For It, where they did an article about coin names:
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW132/page1.htmlAnd here's the relevant bit (although I suggest you read the article; it's pretty good):
This name goes back to Anglo-Saxon times when the Old English word for "money" was pening. Ta-da!
That's a great article, bean - it has clarified all sorts of things I half-knew and added a load that I didn;t know at all.
Many thanks.
ok, slight diversion from this interesting thread:
how do you prounounce the ha in ha'penny? is it haypenny or hahpenny or ha(as in hat)penny? is it a regional thing? has it changed over time? I sing this carol regularly, and I'd like to get it right! I've always sung(and been taught), haypenny.
I've always sung it haypenny. Pretty word, that.
Wow!!! Rhubarb!!! That explains why I have the word "finnig" in my brain meaning "zero." Only it didn't quite mean "zero," but pretty close.
What exactly does this "pfennig" mean? I say it all the time meaning the equivalent of "zilch," but now I realize it means something a little different!!!
This is a wonderful board. Eventually you'll iron out all the wrinkles in your understanding if you stick around long enough.
It has always been pronounced "haypenny" over here, so far as I'm aware, although quite often with the initial "h" dropped. Which makes some sense of the following tale:-
In London Zoo, a new monkey was born, much to the delight of the whole troupe in the enclosure, and to the keepers who tended and cared for them. Unfortunately, this little primate was deformed, having been born without any knees.
The keepers were most distressed about this, fearing that the little fellow would die, until the youngest and newest keeper, a youngster just out of school, had a brilliant idea.
"'Ere," he said to the Head Keeper, "I know what we could do to 'elp the por li'l bleeder!" (London zoo keepers tend to speak in this sort of language, and the swear-word at the end is accepted as a term of endearment in this context!)
"Wot's that, then, son?" asked the Head Keeper.
"Gi's a penny, then," the youngster said, "An' I'll nip rahnd the shop an' get 'em to change it for two 'ayp'nnies."
penny - O.E. pening, penig "penny," from P.Gmc.
*panninggaz. The English coin was originally set at
one-twelfth of a shilling and was of silver, later copper, then
bronze. There are two plural forms: pennies of individual
coins, pence collectively. In translations it rendered various
foreign coins of small denomination, esp. L. denarius,
whence comes its abbreviation d. As Amer.Eng. colloquial
for cent, it is recorded from 1889. Pennyweight is O.E.
penega gewiht, originally the weight of a silver penny. The
herb pennyroyal (1530) is altered by folk etymology from
Anglo-Fr. puliol real; the first element ultimately from L.
puleglum "thyme." Penny-ante (adj.) "cheap, trivial" is first
attested 1935, from poker. Penny dreadful "cheap and gory
fiction" dates from c.1870.
For more on terms of currency, I take you on the time machine to February 2001:
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=17171
how do you prounounce ha'penny?
I've always pronounced it ayp-nee, as in the zoo story.
Thank you for illuminating that, Doc... until you said it, I didn't get Rhuby's story AT ALL!!!
take you on the time machine to February 2001
Didn't feel like digging all the way through that thread but this line popped out at me. [I]t is the only coin to have its nickname embossed on the coin itself. I wonder if it has been pointed out that dime is not a nickname; it is the official name of the denomination. We have mil, cent, dime, dollar and eagle, if memory serves.
I'm not sure if anyone cares but I remember reading last time at the Royal Canadian Mint website that in Canada the coins don't have nicknames, even though we commonly call them by their USn nicknames. They're officially just the one-cent, five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-five-cent pieces, and I suppose dollar and two-dollar coins (in everyday life these are always called a loonie and a toonie/twonie - the spelling of the last one hasn't really settled down yet).
I didn't get Rhuby's story AT ALL!!! That does you great credit, FB - I'm glad there is at least one person on this board whose sanity and inner purity protects her from such evils.
