Penny
Due to inflation, pennies have lost virtually all their purchasing power and are often viewed as an expensive burden to merchants, banks, government mints and the public in general.
Penny is also the informal name of the cent unit of account in Canada, although one-cent coins were removed from circulation in 2012.
[1] The name penny is also used in reference to various historical currencies, also derived from the Carolingian system, such as the French denier and the German pfennig.
It was adopted by Offa of Mercia and other English kings and remained the principal currency in Europe over the next few centuries, until repeated debasements necessitated the development of more valuable coins.
The British penny remained a silver coin until the expense of the Napoleonic Wars prompted the use of base metals in 1797.
No penny is currently formally subdivided, although farthings (1⁄4d), halfpennies, and half cents have previously been minted and the mill (1⁄10¢) remains in use as a unit of account in some contexts.
Penny is first attested in a 1394 Scots text,[n 1] a variant of Old English peni, a development of numerous variations including pennig, penning, and pending.
[n 2] The etymology of the term "penny" is uncertain, although cognates are common across almost all Germanic languages[n 3] and suggest a base *pan-, *pann-, or *pand- with the individualizing suffix -ing.
Common suggestions include that it was originally *panding as a Low Franconian form of Old High German pfant "pawn" (in the sense of a pledge or debt, as in a pawnbroker putting up collateral as a pledge for repayment of loans); *panning as a form of the West Germanic word for "frying pan", presumably owing to its shape; and *ponding as a very early borrowing of Latin pondus ("pound").
From the 16th century, the regular plural pennies fell out of use in England, when referring to a sum of money (e.g. "That costs tenpence.
[6] In Britain, prior to decimalization, values from two to eleven pence were often written, and spoken as a single word, as twopence or tuppence, threepence or thruppence, etc.
In British English, divisions of a penny were added to such combinations without a conjunction, as sixpence-farthing, and such constructions were also treated as single nouns.
Elsewhere, it is usually written with a simple c. The medieval silver penny was modeled on similar coins in antiquity, such as the Greek drachma, the Carthaginian shekel, and the Roman denarius.
[11][12][13] But despite the purity and quality of these pennies, they were often rejected by traders throughout the Carolingian period, in favor of the gold coins used elsewhere; this led to repeated legislation against such refusal, to accept the king's currency.
The miscellaneous silver sceattas minted in Frisia and Anglo-Saxon England after around 680 were probably known as "pennies" at the time.
[16] As in the Frankish Empire,[8] all these pennies were notionally fractions of shillings (solidi; sol) and pounds (librae; livres) but during this period neither larger unit was minted.
[30] Several nations have stopped minting equivalent value coins, and efforts have been made to end the routine use of pennies in several countries.
[31] In the UK, since 1992, one- and two-penny coins have been made from copper-plated steel (making them magnetic) instead of bronze.
