Penny
From Wikinfo
- For criticism see Criticism of Penny
A penny (pl. pence or pennies) is a coin or a unit of currency used in several English-speaking countries.
Contents |
Value
In the 8th century, Charlemagne declared that 240 pennies or pfennigs should be minted from one Carolingian pound, approximately 326 grams (11.5 oz), of silver, so a single coin contained about 1.36 grams (0.048 oz) of silver. (As of May 2009, this would cost about £0.40.)
The penny is among the lowest denomination of coins in circulation.
- 1/100 of the British pound sterling (see British one penny coin), the former Irish pound, the Gibraltar pound, the Falkland Islands pound, or a coin with that value: see history of the English penny.
- 1/240 of the British pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation on 15 February 1971, of the Pound Scots prior to 1707, and also the pre-decimalisation currencies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (1/12 of the shilling), or a coin of that value.
- The preferred name for the one-cent coin in the United States and in Canada, worth 1/100 of the dollar: see penny (U.S. coin), penny (Canadian coin).
In addition, variants of the word penny, with which they share a common root, are or were the names of certain units of currency in non-English-speaking countries:
- A fening is 1/100 of a Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark
- A pfennig was 1/100 of a German mark
- A penni was 1/100 of a Finnish markka
In the United States and Canada, "penny" is normally used to refer to the coin; the quantity of money is a "cent." Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the plural of "penny" is "pence" when referring to a quantity of money and "pennies" when referring to a number of coins[1]. Thus a coin worth five times as much as one penny is worth five pence, but "five pennies" means five coins, each of which is a penny.
When dealing with British or Irish (pound) money, amounts of the decimal "new pence" less than £1 may be suffixed with "p", as in 2p, 5p, 26p, 72p. Pre-1971 amounts of less than 1/- (one shilling) were denoted with a "d" which derived from the term "denarius", as in 2d, 6d, 10d (tuppence, a tanner, and so forth). The lettering "NEW PENNY" or "NEW PENCE" was changed to "ONE PENNY", "TWO PENCE" or "FIVE PENCE", on British decimal coinage in 1982, the year that the pound coin replaced the pound note in England and Wales (though not in Scotland).
Irish pound decimal coinage only used "p" to designate units (possibly as this sufficed for both the English word "pence", and Irish form "pingin").
The British penny as a unit of currency dates back well over a thousand years, and for most of that period the silver penny was the principal denomination in circulation.
Other uses
 
| |
| O: Draped bust of Aethelred left. +ÆĐELRED REX ANGLOR | R: Long cross. +EADǷOLD MO CÆNT |
| Anglo-Saxon silver 'Long Cross' penny of Aethelred II, moneyer Eadwold, Canterbury, c. 997-1003. The cross made cutting the coin into half-pennies or farthings (quarter-pennies) easier. (Note spelling Eadƿold in inscription, using Anglo-Saxon letter wynn in place of modern w.) | |
To "spend a penny" in British idiom means to urinate. The etymology of the phrase is literal; some public toilets used to be coin-operated, with a pre-decimal penny being the charge levied. Eventually, at around the same time as the introduction of decimal coinage, British Rail gradually introduced better public toilets with the name Superloo and the much higher charge of 6d.[2]
Finding a penny is sometimes considered lucky and gives rise to the saying, "Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck." This may be a corruption of "See a pin and pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck" and similar verses, as quoted in The Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore and other places.
Nails
In the US, the length and diameter of a nail is designated by its penny size. This unit's abbreviation is d (e.g. 10d for 10 penny nails), as for British pence before decimalization. A smaller number indicates a shorter, thinner nail and a larger number indicates a longer, thicker nail (e.g. common 10d nails are 0.148" in diameter and 3" long). Nails under 1¼ in., often called brads, are sold mostly in small packages with only a length designation (e.g. ½" (12 mm), 1⅛" (28 mm), etc.).
It is commonly believed that the origin of the term "penny" in relation to nail size is based on the old custom in England of selling nails by the hundred. A hundred nails that sold for six pence were "six penny" nails. The larger the nail, the more a hundred nails would cost, hence the larger nails have a larger number for their penny size.
This however is a false legend: the reference is instead to the nominal mass of the nail expressed in pennyweight (dwt), 1/20 of a Troy ounce. This, anciently, was the defined weight of a silver penny, 1/240 of a pound sterling. Although the pennyweight was officially abolished in the United Kingdom by the Weights and Measures Act 1878, its legacy continues in the classification of nails.
Criticism
Handling and counting penny coins makes transaction costs that may be higher than a penny. It has been claimed that for micropayments the mental arithmetic costs more than the penny. Australia now uses 5¢ as its lowest denominator.[3]
Changes in the price of metal commodity sometimes cause the metal value of pennies to exceed their face value, making them wasteful to mint.[4][5] Several nations have stopped minting equivalent value coins, and efforts have been made to end the routine use of pennies in several countries, including Canada and the United States.[6]
See also
- Penny (Australian coin)
- Penny (British coin)
- Penny (Canadian coin)
- Irish penny coin
- Cent (United States coin)
- Pfennig
- Smashed penny
- Legal Tender Modernization Act
References
- ^ ""Penny"". Oxford English Dictionary. http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/penny?view=uk.
- ^ BBC Nation on Film - Rise and Fall of LNER Mod Cons - Engines Must Not Enter the Potato Siding: "Spend a 6d in the superloo"
- ^ [dead link]
- ^ AROUND THE NATION; Treasurer Says Zinc Penny May Save $50 Million a Year, New York Times, 1 April 1981, http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/us/around-the-nation-treasurer-says-zinc-penny-may-save-50-million-a-year.html, retrieved on 2009-05-07
- ^ Hagenbaugh, Barbara (10 May 2006), Coins cost more to make than face value, USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-05-09-penny-usat_x.htm, retrieved on 2009-05-07
- ^ Lewis, Mark (5 July 2002). "Ban The Penny". Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/05/0705penny.html. Retrieved on 2009-05-07.
External links
- The MegaPenny Project - A visualisation of what exponential numbers of pennies would look like.
- Silver Pennies - Pictures of English silver pennies from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.
- Copper Pennies - Pictures of English copper pennies from 1797 to 1860.
| This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Penny. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of this Wikinfo article is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. |
