pennying

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A drinking game, common at Oxford crewdates and Cambridge swaps, in which dropping a penny into someone's drink obliges them to finish it.

   Pennying is practically a ritual at Oxford crewdates, where a single stray coin can derail a whole conversation.

   By the end of the swap, the table had collapsed into relentless pennying and laughter.

   Note

   Student slang from Oxford and Cambridge, used as a mass noun: you speak of pennying the way you speak of drinking, with no article. Players are said to "save the queen": the royal head on the coin must not be left to drown, so the drink goes down. The Cambridge Student reported in 2010 that the game was already banned in most dining halls, and that permitting it might now be a criminal offense.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of penny.

   Pennying a fuse is dangerous because it lets too much current through the wiring.

   Campus housing warns that students caught pennying doors will be fined.

   Note

   The -ing form covers every use of the verb penny, not only the drinking game. Pennying a door jams it shut with coins wedged into the frame. Pennying a fuse socket swaps a coin for the fuse, a dangerous trick for defeating the breaker. Only the game sense grew into the noun for the game, so context tells the reader which pennying is meant.

3. 3
   nounrarecountable

   A single instance of dropping a penny into someone's drink during a meal or drinking game, obliging them to finish it.

   A surprise pennying left him scrambling to down his pint before the food came out.

   The evening's most memorable pennying came when someone dropped a coin into the tutor's glass.

   Note

   The countable use is the rarer one. A pennying is one coin landing in one glass, so it takes an article and a plural, pennyings. Most speakers reach for the game as a whole or simply say someone was pennied. "A pennying" therefore tends to single out one memorable incident rather than describe the evening's play.

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