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Posted 03/18/2024 09:45 am
In conventional use, having a different word for the name of a coin, instead of an amount of money, can be useful, especially when one is talking about plurals. Using "penny" fulfils this linguistic need.
Saying "I have six cents" is ambiguous; do you have six pennies, or one penny and a nickel, or do you really not even care since you're talking about an amount of money and not about specific coins?
The coin's official and unambiguous name is the "one cent piece", but saying "I have six one cent pieces" is way too long for anybody to say in casual conversation, plus adds it's own set of ambiguities - did you say "six one cents" or "sixty-one cents"? Saying "pennies" is shorter, quicker and less ambiguous, at least in the American context where "penny" doesn't mean anything else.
Incidentally, in Britain and other places which use or used to use "actual pennies" as a unit of currency, this ambiguity is removed by having different plural forms of the word. "I have six pennies" unambiguously means "I have six one-penny coins", whereas "I have six pence" means "I have an amount of money which adds up to £0.06, the exact number and type of coins is irrelevant to me since I'm only concerned about the amount of money I have". You would never say "I have six pennies" if you actually have three tuppences, for example. Britain itself has its own ambiguousness when it comes to "decimal pennies" versus "predecimal pennies", but that's a whole other issue.
For my own personal use, I am quite strict about correct terminology when I'm on the World subsections of this forum; I say "cent" when talking about the American or Canadian one cent piece. But when I'm on the US subsections of the forum (where there is no possibility of confusing the "cent" with an "actual penny"), I tend to follow the majority.
Saying "I have six cents" is ambiguous; do you have six pennies, or one penny and a nickel, or do you really not even care since you're talking about an amount of money and not about specific coins?
The coin's official and unambiguous name is the "one cent piece", but saying "I have six one cent pieces" is way too long for anybody to say in casual conversation, plus adds it's own set of ambiguities - did you say "six one cents" or "sixty-one cents"? Saying "pennies" is shorter, quicker and less ambiguous, at least in the American context where "penny" doesn't mean anything else.
Incidentally, in Britain and other places which use or used to use "actual pennies" as a unit of currency, this ambiguity is removed by having different plural forms of the word. "I have six pennies" unambiguously means "I have six one-penny coins", whereas "I have six pence" means "I have an amount of money which adds up to £0.06, the exact number and type of coins is irrelevant to me since I'm only concerned about the amount of money I have". You would never say "I have six pennies" if you actually have three tuppences, for example. Britain itself has its own ambiguousness when it comes to "decimal pennies" versus "predecimal pennies", but that's a whole other issue.
For my own personal use, I am quite strict about correct terminology when I'm on the World subsections of this forum; I say "cent" when talking about the American or Canadian one cent piece. But when I'm on the US subsections of the forum (where there is no possibility of confusing the "cent" with an "actual penny"), I tend to follow the majority.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
