Tuppence ha'penny?
Everyone who is British and of advancing age know of this.
The rest? Baffled what? 😄
The rest? Baffled what? 😄
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
I've also heard (and occasionally used) Tuppeny-ha'penny as an adjective of derision, implying of poor quality or low value.
A linguistic oddity...
For centuries Britons had perfectly happily and grammatically correctly used Penny as the singular and Pennies or Pence (as above) as the plural.
Then along came decimal currency and the new 1/100 taking over from 1/240 of the Pound Sterling, which we kept, seems to have become pence even when just one on its own.
We don't though, call three of them thruppence, perhaps due to no single coin of that value.
...
Colloquial names for the £ s. d. currency units:
Ha'penny or occasionally, Ha'pence
Tuppence,
Threppance (or "thruppence" depending on accent)
Tanner, (6-pence coin)
Bob, (1 shilling coin)
Two Bob, (2 shilling coin)
Half-a-Crown (2 shillings-&-6d pence coin. The 5s Crown coin was rarely seen.)
Quid (£1 note - now a coin.)
Fiver (£5 note - still used, in new format)
Tenner. (£10 note - still used, in new format)
The Farthing and Penny did not have slang nicknames.
.......
Arithmetic Fun:
Find the cost of 3cwt 2qrs of coal at £5 10s a ton.
[I ton = 20cwt. 1cwt = 4 qrs. £1 = 20s. 1s = 12d.]
Without using a calculator, slide-rule or logarithms! The calculator had not yet appeared and we were introduced to such sums some 3 years before discovering logs and slide-rules - and logs would not work very effectively with this because they introduce decimal places.
Besides, it's not "Mathematics", it's simply Arithmetic.
(We were taught the method - Compound Multiplication - in Primary School so for me, in the early-1960s. I think I can still do it, though perhaps not by the book method. I don't know typical coal retail prices then, but that might be fairly realistic.)
A linguistic oddity...
For centuries Britons had perfectly happily and grammatically correctly used Penny as the singular and Pennies or Pence (as above) as the plural.
Then along came decimal currency and the new 1/100 taking over from 1/240 of the Pound Sterling, which we kept, seems to have become pence even when just one on its own.
We don't though, call three of them thruppence, perhaps due to no single coin of that value.
...
Colloquial names for the £ s. d. currency units:
Ha'penny or occasionally, Ha'pence
Tuppence,
Threppance (or "thruppence" depending on accent)
Tanner, (6-pence coin)
Bob, (1 shilling coin)
Two Bob, (2 shilling coin)
Half-a-Crown (2 shillings-&-6d pence coin. The 5s Crown coin was rarely seen.)
Quid (£1 note - now a coin.)
Fiver (£5 note - still used, in new format)
Tenner. (£10 note - still used, in new format)
The Farthing and Penny did not have slang nicknames.
.......
Arithmetic Fun:
Find the cost of 3cwt 2qrs of coal at £5 10s a ton.
[I ton = 20cwt. 1cwt = 4 qrs. £1 = 20s. 1s = 12d.]
Without using a calculator, slide-rule or logarithms! The calculator had not yet appeared and we were introduced to such sums some 3 years before discovering logs and slide-rules - and logs would not work very effectively with this because they introduce decimal places.
Besides, it's not "Mathematics", it's simply Arithmetic.
(We were taught the method - Compound Multiplication - in Primary School so for me, in the early-1960s. I think I can still do it, though perhaps not by the book method. I don't know typical coal retail prices then, but that might be fairly realistic.)