Found an interesting word..."jitney". I had heard the term, but never knew where it came from. AHD says: 1. A small motor vehicle, such as a bus or van, that transports passengers on a route for a small fare. 2. Archaic A nickel.
ETYMOLOGY: Origin unknown.


Yet the local paper mentions this term and says: "Jitney is slang for a nickel or five-cent coin, which was the fare for short cab rides around the World War I period."

Just wondering if there are other terms named for monetary denominations no longer in use?

Have you seen a five-and-dime lately? Not I!

Interesting word, Morgan. I must admit that I had never heard of the word, though I found out something about it through Google: http://www.visitac.com/jitney/

The OED (dictionary.oed.com) says "jitney" is North American slang for a nickle. A "jitney bus" was "an omnibus or other motor vehicle that would carry passengers for a fare. The original fare was 5 cents; thus a nickle came to be called a "jitney". One of the quotes called it Jewish slang.

"Jitney bus" was shortened to "jitney" to refer to not only the bus, but other motor vehicles as well. I remember my Dad calling a forklift a "jitney".

According to the OED, "jitney" came to refer to anything "cheap, impoverished, or ramshackle", because of the poor quality of the "jitney busses" or because of the low fare. Apparently "jitney" in this sense can be either a noun or an adjective. The quotes refer to "jitney pianos", "jitney bars" (taverns), and "jitney dances" (nickle dances).

I mentioned that a forklift was sometimes called a "jitney". Also, "bull" was (and still is) used to refer to forklifts and other small motor vehicles. I found about 10 entries for the noun "bull" in the OED. One interesting enty said that "bull" is short for "John Bull", which is "a personification of the English nation; Englishmen collectively, or the typical Englishman.

I got side-tracked a bit. Another monetary unit that is rarely used is "bit" or 12.5 cents. It is still around as "two bits", a quarter, and "two-bit" is a slang term meaning cheap or insignificant.

And who can forget that old high school cheer: "two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar! All for...stand up and holler!"

I found out the US Treasury did mint a two-cent coin in 1864 and, later, three-cent and twenty-cent coins. Any idea what they were called? Incidentally, the motto "In God We Trust" first appeared on the two-cent piece. (The Word Detective - www.word-detective.com)
Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Wed Aug 28th, 2002 at 0:28.]

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Have you seen a five-and-dime lately? Not I!

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It's called "The Dollar Store", now!

Yep! You are right about the five-and-dime now being dollar stores!

But, I live in an area where we still have a true five and dime store. It is the nicest store. Complete with the smell of popcorn wafting through from the popcorn machine next to the door.

"Vidler's 5 & 10 is a step back in time. Four connected buildings of fun. Shopping for the whole family!"

While looking up "harry monk" for another thread, I found "Half An Oxford Scholar" as cockney rhyming slang for "Half a dollar". This, too, is a new term to me!

It's new to me, too!
Now, instead of dime stores, we have dollar stores. Inflation, I guess.

"Two bits" puts me in mind of "Shave and a haircut: two bits."

I understand this usage comes from an old spanish coin that could be cut into 8 parts, each called a "bit". We also know that coin from the "pieces of eight" of pirate lore.

Morgan wonders "if there are other terms named for monetary denominations no longer in use".

With the advent of the euro, many coins of recent familiarity are no longer in use. But putting those aside:

Would "greenback" qualify? It has come to me a piece of currency (or "of US currency"). However, greenback originally meant a particular new kind of note issued in 1862 to finance the US Civil War. Greenbacks were legal tender notes but were not backed or unsecured by specie -- that is, not redeemable in gold.

There are loads of British slang terms for currency denominations no longer in use. One such is tanner for the old sixpence. Another is bob for the old shilling (twelve old pence). For the half-crown coin (that is, two shillings and sixpence) there were tosherooon, or half a dollar (from a period when the rate of exchange was better than it is now). Another term was joey, originally a name given by cabbies to the silver Britannia groat, or fourpenny piece, but which stopped being issued in 1855, after which the name was transferred to the then silver threepenny piece instead.

Are those terms still used today, Arnie? I must say, I have never heard of any of them.

I remember a Christmas song from my childhood. Sung in a round, it makes a beautiful tune. This page has a very short version of it to hear. It is done in round with bells.

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat.
Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.
Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.

If you have no penny, a ha'penny will do
And if you have no ha'penny then God bless you.
If you have no ha'penny then God bless you.

Christmas is Coming
~~Traditional

Kalleh,
tanner, half a dollar and bob were all common (in fact more or less universal) English terms for a sixpence, half a crown and a shilling until decimalisation wiped out the denominations to which they refererred.
I'd never heard tosheroon but five shillings (for which there wasn't even a common denomination of coin by the time decimalisation came around) was commonly known as a dollar.
The two coins to which 'joey' refers both predate me having any spending power so it's another term I'm not really familiar with. The coin for three pre-decimal pence 'the threepenny piece' was of course always pronounced 'thruppeny bit'.
The two shilling piece was known as a florin.

Somehow the post-decimalisation coins never managed to acquire nicknames.

Habent Abdenda Omnes Praeter Me ac Simiam Meam

What's a "red cent"?

(I know, I can look it up. But if anyone knows, they deserve the credit and the glory.)

Thanks, BobHale, and welcome to our abode!

Well, AHD is so very helpful on this one!

"red cent - NOUN: Informal Insignificant value: not worth a red cent."

So, if anyone knows where it came from...we are still looking for an answer here!

Speaking of coin words, and speaking of "insignificant value", is tuppenny ha'penny still used as British slang for something inferior and trivial?

Some older people probably usetuppenny ha'penny but not the younger people, who never used halfpennies, anyway.

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"red cent - NOUN: Informal Insignificant value: not worth a red cent."

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Could it possibly something as obvious as the fact that a penny/cent is copper and thus, reddish in color?

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Originally posted by museamuse:

Could it possibly something as obvious as the fact that a penny/cent is copper and thus, reddish in color?

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The Word Detective agrees with you.

Scroll down and look for I'll trade you for some of those green things.

Habent Abdenda Omnes Praeter Me ac Simiam Meam

Thanks Bob! (she says smugly). That word-detective site is delightful, by the way! The columnist really had me giggling at some points and he knows his stuff!

I agree, museamuse, the word detective is great! I had not seen it before. Thanks, BobHale!

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Tinman says: I found out the US Treasury did mint a two-cent coin in 1864 and, later, three-cent and twenty-cent coins. Any idea what they were called?

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Interesting question. Scanning through the web, I find it the names are basically "two-cent piece", "three-cent piece", etc. But perhaps these are the names used by modern coin collectors, for I can't believe the public, using them, would not have come up with some simpler names.

I did find the word trime for the silver 3-cent pieces. They were very thin and small, easily lost, and tended to discolor -- and "It wasn’t long before these so-called 'trimes' acquired the derogatory nickname of "fish scales.'"

Continuing:

The silver 3-cent piece was small because otherwise it would have had more than 3 cents' worth of silver in it.

There was later a larger 3-cent coin made of a cheaper metal alloy, largly nickel. It is called the "3-cent nickel" -- a name that sounds odd in the ears of those who are used to the current 5-cent coin commonly called the "nickel".

" the post-decimalisation coins never managed to acquire nicknames."

I still refer to the pounds coin a quids - sdo I suppose the one-pound coin almost has the nickname "a quid".

Richard English