Quote:
KurtS said:
While we might describe something costing one "penny", few Americans ever say "five pennies", "ten pennies" or "fifty pennies"; cents is usually used in plural.
...and then Muckeye said:
We Anglo's will have our genuine pennies. (or pence)
Which highlights a key distinction which needs to be made. Because the word "cent", compared to the word "penny", is defective - or at least, it was designed poorly.
The word "penny", in it's traditional English usage, has two separate but related meanings - a fact highlighted by the observation made above that these two separate meanings have different plural forms. A dictionary definition might look like this:
Quote:
Penny noun
1. The name of a British coin, worth 1 penny currency (see 2. below), also used in numerous British colonies and former colonies. Also used colloquially in North America to refer to the one cent coin. Plural: pennies
2. A unit of currency formerly used in Britain and numerous British colonies and former colonies, worth 1/12th of a shilling or 1/240th of a pound. Also used for the present-day fractional currency unit of Britain and a few British dependencies, worth 1/100th of a pound. Plural: pence
Thus, you could point to a pile of 11 one penny coins and say "I've got eleven pennies", but if you put those coins in your purse and go shopping, you'd say "I've got eleven pence". This is why the coin that's worth half a shilling is called a "sixpence", not a "sixpennies" (though sometimes it might be referred to as a "sixpenny-bit" or "sixpenny-piece").
The word "cent", although it likewise carries two separate but related meanings, does not have this distinction in the plural - a pile of eleven 1 cent coins is "11 cents", scrape them together and put them in your pocket and you've got "11 cents". This, to me, partly explains why "penny" is still in common use, even amongst coin collectors. Perhaps even especially amongst coin collectors, for whom the distinction is quite useful.
Let's look at an example.
If you say, "I was given fifty-five cents", the meaning is ambiguous - were all the coins one cent coins, or were there simply lots of coins of mixed or unspecified denomination, but all adding up to 55 cents worth of money? Someone might even misunderstand completely, thinking you were given 50 five-cent coins! To a coin collector, there might be a great deal of difference in which of these meanings is most interesting and relevant to you.
To say "I was given fifty-five one cent coins" is clearer, but there's still the ambiguity surrounding the word "cent", and using running two numbers together like that ("fifty-five" and "one") is inelegant and can add to the confusion. Using the word "pennies" is clearer, because it's immediately obvious you're talking about a number of coins, not an amount of money. And "pennies" is easier to say than "one cent coins".
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
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Posted 10/06/2008 07:03 am
