penny

From Middle English peni, from Old English penning, penniġ, from Proto-Germanic *panningaz, of uncertain origin (see that page for theories).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛ.ni/

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• Rhymes: -ɛni
• (in compounds like "twopenny", dated) IPA^(key): /pəni/

penny (plural pennies or pence)

1. (historical) In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a copper coin worth ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation. Abbreviation: d.
   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 55 Fifth Avenue, [1933], OCLC 2666860, page 0056:

     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 that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

2. In the United Kingdom, a copper coin worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a pound sterling. Abbreviation: p.
3. (historical) In Ireland, a coin worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of an Irish pound before the introduction of the euro. Abbreviation: p.
4. In the US and Canada, a one-cent coin, worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a dollar. Abbreviation: ¢.
   • 2015 November 22, John Oliver, “Pennies”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 3, episode 35, HBO:

     Holy shit! A hundred and eleven pennies! At that point, that dog had more Lincoln in him than Mary Todd.

5. In various countries, a small-denomination copper or brass coin.
6. A unit of nail size, said to be either the cost per 100 nails, or the number of nails per penny. Abbreviation: d.
7. Money in general.

   to turn an honest penny

   • William Shakespeare (c.1564–1616)

     What penny hath Rome borne, / What men provided, what munition sent?

The plural pence is only used as a unit of currency. The plural is pennies is used for other cases, in particular when referring to multiple individual coins.

Compounds (twopence, threepence, fourpence and so on up to tenpence, but not eleven pence or any higher) should be read with the stress on the first syllable and a reduced /ə/ in pence. Thus /ˈtʌpəns/, /ˈθɹʌpəns/, /ˈfɔːpəns/ and so on.

• (¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling): old penny
• (¹⁄₁₀₀ of a pound sterling): new penny (old-fashioned)
• (one-cent coin): cent

penny (third-person singular simple present pennies, present participle pennying, simple past and past participle pennied)

1. (slang) To 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.

2. (electronics) 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.

• d
• cent
• the penny drops

• Pynne

Borrowed from English

• IPA^(key): /pɛ.ni/

penny m (plural pennys)

1. penny

• “penny” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

penny m (plural pennies)

1. Alternative spelling of péni