coin
Pluralcoins
Pluralcoins
- 1A piece of currency, usually a metal disc, though sometimes polygonal or made with a hole in the middle.
The cashier handed back a coin and two bills in change.
Ancient Roman coins still turn up in plowed fields across Europe.
UsageYou flip or toss a coin to decide something. Paid in coin (or in coins) means paid with metal money rather than paper bills.
Note
The word displaced Middle English mynt, which survives as mint. It counts single pieces, like the doubloons, louis d'ors and guineas in Stevenson's Treasure Island.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Coin displaced Middle English mynt. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English mynt survives as modern English mint. en.wiktionary.org
- Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island mentions doubloons, louis d'ors and guineas as coins. gutenberg.org
- 2To make or fabricate something, especially a new word or phrase.
Researchers coin terms faster than dictionaries can record them.
The columnist coined a phrase that politicians repeated for decades.
UsageThe object is usually a new word or phrase: coin a term. To coin a phrase often jokingly comes before a cliché.
Similarinvent, originate, mint
Note
Making a new word is pictured as striking a new coin, which is why mint serves as a synonym. Shakespeare's Coriolanus already says his lungs will "coin words", and today a term or phrase is the usual object. Dryden's Virgil shows the darker side in a man who "daily coined" some new pretense. When the object is a story or an excuse, coin means fabricate and implies deceit.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- The fabrication sense extends the coin-making sense, and mint is a synonym. en.wiktionary.org
- In Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the character Coriolanus says his lungs will 'coin words'. gutenberg.org
- Dryden's translation of Virgil describes a man fabricating new pretences with the words 'daily coined'. The man is Pygmalion, described by Venus in Aeneid Book I. gutenberg.org
- 3Ellipsis of cryptocoin; a cryptocurrency.
Analysts doubt the new coin will hold its value.
She moved her coin from the exchange to a private wallet.
UsageCan mean a whole cryptocurrency (a new coin) or an amount of one: she moved her coin to a wallet.
Note
A clipping of cryptocoin that carries both of that word's meanings: a whole cryptocurrency, as in what's the best coin to buy, or a single unit of one. Context tells the two apart. A coin to buy is usually a currency, while a number of coins means units.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Coin in the cryptocurrency sense is a shortening of cryptocoin. en.wiktionary.org
- 4A token used in place of regular currency within a particular establishment, such as a casino or arcade.
Before slot machines took cards, players fed each machine one casino coin at a time from a paper cup.
The laundromat's machines accept only its own brass coins, sold at the front desk.
Similarchip
- 5Money in general, not limited to physical coins; used casually for cash, earnings, or wealth.
She left consulting because the startup offered better coin.
Athletes at that level pull in serious coin from endorsements alone.
UsageUsed without a: serious coin, make some coin, better coin.
Similarmoney, currency, funds, cash, dough
Note
Slang for money in bulk, used in both British and American English and at home in African-American Vernacular. It is older than it sounds, since Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) has traders who will "make no end of coin".
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. en.wikisource.org
- Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899. en.wikisource.org
- The words “make no end of coin” occur in the work, with Marlow describing the trading Company's plans. gutenberg.org
- 6To make coins by stamping metal, or to convert metal into coins.
The mint coined gold into sovereigns until the practice ended.
Early mints would coin imported silver into local currency.
UsageYou coin metal into money: coin gold into sovereigns.
Similarmint, manufacture
Note
The literal minting verb, and its object can be either end of the process: the metal itself, or the product, as in coin silver dollars or coin a medal. Fineness matters. Alexander E. Outerbridge Jr., writing on American coinage in 1898, discusses the silver dollar of 412½ grains, nine tenths fine, and what it was worth in gold when first coined. Mint is its nearest synonym, and both verbs later moved from metal to inventing words.
Less common meanings
- 7Something that serves as payment or recompense, whether or not it is money.
Loyalty was the coin in which the old senator traded.
When her brother teased her at dinner, she paid him back in his own coin.
UsageUsually in a kind of coin: repaid in a nobler coin. Pay someone back in their own coin means treat them as they treated you.
Similarcurrency, payment, recompense
Note
Henry Hammond in 1654 wrote of losses "repaid in a nobler coin". The same frame gives paying someone back in their own coin, returning the treatment they gave.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Henry Hammond wrote the quoted words about losses being repaid. en.wiktionary.org
- Hammond’s Of Fundamentals in a Notion Referring to Practise was first published in 1654. en.wikisource.org
- 8To acquire or make something rapidly, especially money.
The studio coined money on every sequel it released.
That food truck seems to coin money whenever it parks near the stadium.
UsageMostly in coin money: the shop is coining money.
Oppositelose
Note
Money-making pictured as minting: to coin money is to produce it as fast as a mint strikes it. Speed is the point. John Locke's 1691 essay on lowering interest says tenants cannot coin their rent just at quarter-day and must gather it by degrees.
- 9A small, circular slice of food, such as a piece of carrot or sausage cut crosswise.
The stew calls for sausage cut into thin coins.
Top each cucumber coin with a dab of cream cheese.
UsageOften plural, after the food it is cut from: carrot coins, cucumber coins.
Similarround, slice, disk, medallion
Note
Fodor's The Carolinas & Georgia offers deep-fried jalapeño coins, and the cookbook Eat Something calls for bread and butter pickle coins. The name describes shape and thinness together, a flat disc, so it suits anything sliced crosswise from a cylinder.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Fodor's The Carolinas & Georgia mentions deep-fried jalapeño coins. en.wiktionary.org
- Eat Something calls for bread and butter pickle coins. en.wiktionary.org
- 10Something in wide circulation or common use, such as an idea, expression, or piece of information.
Conspiracy theories have become the common coin of late-night radio.
By spring, the show's catchphrase had become common coin among teenagers.
UsageUsually used with an adjective: common coin, current coin. Ideas are or become common coin.
Similarcurrency, circulation, parlance, usage, use
Oppositedisuse
Note
Ideas and phrases borrow the language of money here: what passes from hand to hand becomes current coin. Tennyson uses exactly that pairing in In Memoriam (1850).
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Alfred Tennyson uses the exact phrase “current coin” in In Memoriam. gutenberg.org
- In Memoriam was first published in 1850. en.wikisource.org
- 11
- 12A corner or external angle, as of a wall or building.
Similarquoin
Note
Here the word keeps the cornerstone meaning of Old French coigne, the branch of its history that did not lead to money. Quoin and coign are the same word in other spellings. Quoin is a synonym in this sense. Latin cuneus meant "wedge," a meaning that survives in other uses of quoin, such as the printer's wedge. Context separates it from currency: the coin of a wall or a building is never something you spend.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Latin cuneus ("wedge") became Old French coigne, which could mean a wedge, a cornerstone or a die for stamping, and then Middle English coyn. Coign and cuneus are its doublets, and quoin is related. Coin pushed out the earlier Middle English mynt, which came from Old English mynet and survives as modern mint.