penny
/ˈpɛni
/- He held out his hand and showed me a fifty pence and ten pence coin and said ‘All I want is a cup of tea.’
- Even more shocking than their aggrandizement of linguistic power is their evident ignorance of how English, the language of pounds and pennies, dollars and cents, works.
- He had pencilled a price of four pounds and fifty pence onto the first page.
- Prior to decimalization, the pound was divided into twenty shillings, each shilling into twelve pennies and each penny into four farthings.
- Before 1971 there were 240 pennies in a pound, 12 pennies in a shilling, and maths lessons were a lot more difficult.
- The getter collects all the materials needed for the activity, which include shaving cream, 2 paper towels, and a penny.
- ‘A hundred pennies make a dollar,’ my father would say, encouraging me to surrender the coin in my hand to a narrow slot in the head of a porcelain pig.
- Let the widow give her penny and the laborer his wage.
- He will preach and say, you might be a rich man and you are without avarice, or you might be a poor person with only a penny in your pocket and you might be avaricious because you desire to be wealthy.
- And before that I always saved up my pennies in a money box for rainy days.
- So one of my biggest pet peeves is people who waste lab supply money on things you can make yourself for pennies and only a little bit of work.
- So I'll be rolling up my pennies - and trust me, there are a lot of pennies to be rolled - and sending the money off to Rachel to support her wonderful project.
- As recently as three weeks ago he had not paid back a penny of the money he owes the House of Commons Fees Office (ie the taxpayer), despite his claims last year that he had done so.
- These groups do not use a penny of government money when they counsel women for whom birth control has failed that abortion is an option.
- I said it wouldn't require a penny of government money.
Usage
On the different uses of the plural forms pence and pennies, see pence (usage).
Phrases
a bad penny always turns up
be two (or ten) a penny
count (or watch or pinch) the (or your) pennies
every penny
in for a penny, in for a pound
look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves
pennies from heaven
the penny dropped
a penny for your thoughts
Origin
Old English penig, penning of Germanic origin; related to Dutch penning, German Pfennig, perhaps also to pawn2 and (with reference to shape) pan1.
The English word penny is related to Dutch penning and German Pfennig, but their ultimate origin is unknown. The penny, originally of pure silver, then later of copper (hence the colloquial term coppers), was first used in England in the 8th century. The origins of the phrase the penny has dropped lie in gambling arcades. The idea is of a coin-operated slot machine whirring into action when you insert a small coin. The reference to penny gives a clue as to the age of the expression, as it goes back to the 1950s. Inflation has also caught up with proverbial sayings such as in for a penny, in for a pound, used to express someone's intention to see an undertaking through—it dates from the late 17th century, when a penny would have been a significant investment to many. You would need at least 20p now to spend a penny in a British public lavatory. This phrase comes from a time when coin-operated locks were commonly found on the doors of public toilets, operated by the old, heavy pre-decimal pennies. These pennies went out of use on 5 February 1971. See also pound.
Rhymes
- atomic physics
- atomic power
- atomic radiation
- atomic reactor
- atomics
- atomic spectrum
- atomic theory
- atomic time
- atomic transition
- atomic unit
- atomic volume
- atomic war
- atomic wedgie
- atomic weight
- atomise
- atomiser
- atomism
- atomist
- atomistic
- atomistical
- atomistically
- atomization
- atomize
- atomizer
- atom laser