/ˈpɛni/, /ˈpɪni/, /pəni/
OriginFrom Middle English peny, from Old English peniġ, penniġ, penning (“penny”), from Proto-West Germanic *panning, from Proto-Germanic *panningaz, of uncertain origin (see that page for theories). Doublet of pfennig and fening.
- historicalIn the United Kingdom and Ireland and many other countries, a unit of currency worth ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation, or a copper coin worth this amount. Abbreviation: d.
“Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know tha”
“We had not proceeded very far across the south cantilever when we saw a penny lying beside the track, and another a short distance further on. We were to find several more pennies, and some half-penni”
“However he lost out, as other business interests whom he had alienated by his efforts to squeeze every penny of profit from the canal, supported the construction of the railway.”
- In the United Kingdom, a unit of currency worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a pound sterling, or a copper coin worth this amount. Abbreviation: p.
- historicalIn Ireland, a coin worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of an Irish pound before the introduction of the euro. Abbreviation: p.
- In the US and (formerly) Canada, a one-cent coin, worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a dollar. Abbreviation: ¢.
“Holy shit! A hundred and eleven pennies! At that point, that dog had more Lincoln in him than Mary Todd.”
“A Treasury spokesperson said the government made its final order of penny blanks this month, and the United States Mint will continue to manufacture pennies only as long as an inventory of penny blank”
- In various countries, a small-denomination copper or brass coin.
- A unit of nail size, said to be either the cost per 100 nails, or the number of nails per penny. Abbreviation: d.
- Money in general.
“to turn an honest penny”
“What penny hath Rome borne, / What men provided, what munition sent?”
- slangTo jam a door shut by inserting pennies between the doorframe and the door.
“Zach and Ben had only been at college for a week when their door was pennied by the girls down the hall.”
- To circumvent the tripping of an electrical circuit breaker by the dangerous practice of inserting a coin in place of a fuse in a fuse socket.
- During a meal or as part of a drinking game, to drop a penny in a person's drink with the expectation that they finish it (or some such variation thereof); commonly associated with crewdates at Oxford and swaps at Cambridge.
“You got pennied! Down it, fresher.”
- A diminutive of the female given name Penelope.
- A surname.
“Max Cross cut a fine figure as the Colonel, Percy Penny was a somewhat unducal Duke, while Edgar McHale gave a particularly good rendering of the Major.”
““Because these racist bigots try to prevent us from standing up for our baby, our boy, he should be afforded the same rights that Kyle Rittenhouse had, Daniel Penny and all the people who have claimed”
- An unincorporated community in Calloway County, Kentucky, United States.
- An unincorporated community in Pike County, Kentucky.
- A small community on the Fraser River in central British Columbia, Canada.
Formspennies(plural) · pence(plural) · pens(obsolete, plural) · peny(alternative, obsolete) · penie(alternative, obsolete) · pennie(alternative, obsolete) · pennies(present, singular, third-person) · pennying(participle, present) · pennied(participle, past) · pennied(past) · Pennie(alternative)
Source: Wiktionary