fippenny bit

English

Noun

fippenny bit (plural fippenny bits)

1. (obsolete, US, Pennsylvania region) The Spanish half real, or one sixteenth of a dollar.

Usage notes

• Before the Act of Congress, February 21, 1857, caused the adoption of decimal coins and the withdrawal of foreign coinage from circulation, this coin passed for 6¼ cents, and was called in New England a fourpence ha'penny or fourpence; in New York a sixpence; in Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc., a fip; and in Louisiana, a picayune.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “fippenny bit”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)