penny

Pluralpennies, pence

Formspennies, pennying, pennied

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A one-cent coin used in the United States (and formerly Canada), worth one hundredth of a dollar.

   He dropped a penny into the parking meter's coin slot.

   The cashier handed back three pennies in change.

   Similarcent

   Note

   North America took over the British coin's name for its own smallest coin. Officially it is a cent, written ¢, but everyday speech calls the coin a penny and uses pennies as the plural. Its portrait is the point of John Oliver's 2015 joke about a dog that swallowed a hundred and eleven of them and had "more Lincoln in him than Mary Todd." Canada used the name too, before it stopped using the coin.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A unit of British currency worth one hundredth of a pound sterling, or a copper coin of that value.

   She counted out ninety pence in small coins for the fare.

   Each penny in the till was logged at closing time.

   Note

   Decimal coinage changed the abbreviation as well as the value. The modern British penny is written p, not the d of the pre-decimal coin, and a hundred make the pound instead of two hundred and forty. Amounts are usually given in pence, as in ninety pence for a fare.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Money considered in general terms, rather than one specific coin or sum.

   The charity stretches every penny to reach more families.

   He earned his living honestly and never wasted a penny.

   Similarcent, dime

   Note

   One small coin can stand for money in general. Shakespeare does this in King John when he asks "What penny hath Rome borne?", meaning what money Rome had spent. Today the sense lives mostly in fixed phrases such as to turn an honest penny, meaning to earn money honestly. It also appears in negatives like not a penny, where it stands for the whole sum.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   In various countries, a small-denomination coin made of copper or brass.

   Travelers often came home with a pocketful of foreign pennies.

   A single penny bought a small loaf in that village market.

   Similarcopper

5. 5
   nounhistoricalcountable

   Before decimalization, a unit worth one 240th of a pound in the UK, Ireland and other countries, or a copper coin of that value.

   A skilled laborer might earn only a few pence a day.

   She paid the toll with a single penny and crossed the bridge.

   Note

   The old coin behind every later sense: Old English peniġ, a doublet of pfennig and fening, worth a two-hundred-and-fortieth of a pound and written d. in sums. It now belongs to writing about money before decimalization. Two plurals serve it: pennies for the coins themselves, like those H. A. Vallance found along the Forth Bridge in 1950, and pence for an amount. An obsolete plural, pens, has dropped away.

6. 6
   nounhistoricalcountable

   In Ireland, a coin worth one hundredth of an Irish pound, used before the euro was introduced.

   Shoppers counted their pence carefully before the euro arrived.

   He found a penny from the old Irish currency among his coins.

   Note

   Ireland's decimal penny was a close twin of the British one, a hundredth of the pound written p. It is now a historical term, because the euro replaced the Irish pound. When writing about Irish prices before that change, say pence or p, as a British writer would. For prices after the change, use cent.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A unit of nail size, said to be either the cost per hundred nails or the number of nails obtainable for one penny.

   Builders often specify nails by penny size rather than by length.

   The penny rating tells a carpenter roughly how long the nail is.

   Note

   Builders still size nails with the old abbreviation of the pre-decimal coin. A 10d nail is read aloud as "ten-penny," and the number works as a rating of length rather than of price. Where the measure came from is uncertain. It may have been the price of a hundred nails or the number of nails a penny would buy. Either way, a modern carpenter uses the number without thinking about money.

8. 8
   verbslangtransitive

   To jam a door shut by wedging pennies between the door and its frame.

   They love to penny each other's rooms during exam week.

   He woke to find his door pennied shut from the hallway.

   Note

   A campus prank verb, slang and mostly used among students. Coins are forced into the gap at the latch side until the door binds so tightly that it cannot be opened from inside. It is most natural in the passive. A door is pennied, or someone wakes to find their door pennied shut, and the pranksters themselves are often left unnamed.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To drop a penny into someone's drink during a meal or drinking game, expecting them to finish it.

   New students quickly learn how easily a senior will penny their glass.

   Someone pennied her wine, so she downed it to loud cheers.

   Note

   A piece of Oxbridge dining slang, at home at Oxford crewdates and Cambridge swaps, the shared dinners where student groups eat and drink together. It sits most naturally in the passive, shouted at whoever has been caught: "You got pennied! Down it, fresher." As a verb it follows the ordinary pattern for words ending in -y, giving pennies, pennying and pennied.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To bypass an electrical fuse by inserting a coin in place of it, stopping the circuit from cutting off the current.

    Tenants sometimes penny a blown fuse rather than replace it.

    The inspector found that someone had pennied the panel.

    Note

    An electrician's word for a dangerous shortcut. A coin conducts current but has no point at which it melts and breaks the circuit, so putting one in a fuse socket removes the circuit's protection against overload, the job the fuse was there to do. The verb takes the fuse or the panel as its object. A pennied fuse is something an inspector reports, not a repair.

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