pence
- 1Plural of penny.
The bus fare went up by twenty pence last month.
She counted out the last few pence from her purse.
Note
A contracted plural, worn down in the 14th century from penies, the collective plural of penny. That origin still shapes its use: it counts a sum of money (twenty pence, a few pence), while pennies counts the coins themselves. It belongs to the pound sterling and the old Irish pound, abbreviated p for decimal amounts and d for pre-decimal ones. An American one-cent coin makes pennies, never this form.
pence is a form of penny
penny, noun: A one-cent coin used in the United States (and formerly Canada), worth one hundredth of a dollar. Full entry
- Spelling
- penny → pence: irregular plural (no -s)
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with pence, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
This is a 14th-century contraction of "penies" (pennies), the collective plural of penny.