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SIXPENCE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A small coin of the United Kingdom worth six pennies; not minted since 1970
Synonyms:
sixpence; tanner
Classified under:
Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession
Hypernyms ("sixpence" is a kind of...):
coin (a flat metal piece (usually a disc) used as money)
Domain region:
Britain; Great Britain; U.K.; UK; United Kingdom; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (a monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland; 'Great Britain' is often used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom)
Context examples:
For sixpence a day, at the most; while now you may walk across the country and stretch out either hand to gather in whatever you have a mind for.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
His lips moved, and he gave voice to this enigmatic utterance: A shilling’s worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out for thruppenny-bits, or the publicans ’ll shove ’em on you for sixpence.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
I don't know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while, said my aunt; cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was at the other end of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know; anyhow, it fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence; and Betsey's sixpences were all there, and there's an end of them.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
“If I hadn't a family, and that family hadn't the cowpock,” said the waiter, “I wouldn't take a sixpence. If I didn't support a aged pairint, and a lovely sister,”—here the waiter was greatly agitated—“I wouldn't take a farthing.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I heard that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn't a sixpence to bless himself with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, was as poor as job.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He paid me a week down (from his own pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my strength, small as it was.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor's house, and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor's history—as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
