Could the future be a world where your thoughts cost more than a nickel?
U.S. Mint presses final cent after more than 200 years
America’s last penny was minted at the United States Mint in Philadelphia, ending coin production that began in 1793 and ended on November 12.
Most Americans now know that the Mint will never make another penny. Some companies began reporting coin shortages even before the last penny was stamped.
What other possible effects of Penny’s death? The colorful colloquialism that uses the word “penny” may not make you a penny in the near future.
Phrases and clichés that have been coined recently about pennies are not worth a penny or two, such as “A penny to one’s thoughts,” “Worth a penny,” “It costs a good penny,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” and “If you pick up a penny, you’ll be lucky all day long.”
Will these words disappear? Could the future be a world where your thoughts cost more than a nickel? Will another coin appear as a fortune when picked up from the ground?
In some ways, the adage “A penny saved is a penny earned” has already lost its meaning. That’s because the U.S. Mint told the Treasury Department in its annual report that each penny costs 3.69 cents to produce. This suggests that the government is making money by not saving a penny.
Still, when it comes to language, “many of today’s languages can have short half-lives, so it’s hard to predict what will happen,” says Philip Duncan, an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Kansas.
Idioms expressing thoughts about penny phrases
According to John Ayto’s From the Horse’s Mouth: Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms, phrases such as “worth a penny” are idioms, defined as “phrases that behave like words.”
According to Dictionary.com, the idioms Ait mentioned, such as “raking someone over the coals,” which is an exaggerated way of saying someone was severely reprimanded, originate from medieval torture. The site also notes that the word “kick the bucket,” which means to die, likely originated from a method of killing pigs 300 years ago.
Duncan said idioms “can be very durable and stick around for a long time, even if the item isn’t that common.” Examples he gives are “having an ax to grind” and “keeping your nose to the grindstone.” Thankfully, both exist, although very few people have access to an actual ax or grindstone.
The last penny may have been made in the United States, but with an estimated 300 billion pennies in circulation, each penny remains legal tender. So the language surrounding pennies isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either.
“Words and phrases related to the iconic penny will continue to circulate for some time to come,” Colin McIntosh, editor-in-chief of Cambridge Dictionaries, told USA TODAY.
“As long as the penny continues to exist, we will continue to say that things are ‘worth a penny’ and that accountants ‘penny pinch’, and we will continue to use the phrase ‘not a penny’ to mean ‘no money at all,'” Mackintosh said. “But as the penny has less and less impact on people’s lives, becoming more symbolic than real, these phrases will slowly start to feel outdated.”
McIntosh said the penny was already falling in some phrases “thanks to the loss of value in the penny.” “For example, we don’t have ‘penny candy’ anymore.”
Duncan points out that other penny-related idioms have already disappeared, such as “consider/consider one’s penny (good) silver,” which means someone considers themselves or their opinions to be more valuable than others, and “a penny on the forehead/face,” which is used to remind people that they can’t carry material possessions.
Pennyphrases could be a substitute for cash and are ‘disgusting’ for America’s youth
For young Americans, some idioms related to pennies already have no meaning. When Duncan discussed penny idioms with his children and his daughter’s eighth-grade friends, some of them didn’t know some proverbs related to pennies, such as “my two cents,” “pinch a penny,” and “a penny for what you think.”
While many viewers of the film adaptations of Stephen King’s “It” (2017’s “It” and 2019’s “It Chapter 2”) and HBO’s new prequel series “IT: Welcome to Derry” may not know the name of the character Pennywise the Clown, Duncan said the name comes from the old-fashioned phrase “Pennywise and the Pound Fool.”
What’s unclear, Duncan said, is whether young people are simply less familiar with these phrases because they’re used less often, or whether other factors are at play, such as young people spending less on cash than older people. He was referring to a Nov. 6 Harris poll that found more than half (53%) of Gen Zers (ages 13 to 28) say they only use physical cash as a last resort, and nearly a third (29%) describe cash users as “out of touch” or “tired.”
Meanwhile, while many high schoolers are getting “broccoli perms,” younger students are “still having fun” with the slang meme “6-7” and “41” — numbers that have become viral phrases after being referenced in rap songs, Duncan said.
The numbers have remained fairly constant for most older students, he said, and “for many, these are current trends that will probably disappear quickly.” “Can you imagine if these became idiomatic phrases?”
Gen Z and Gen Alpha prefer to invest their “two cents”
Betsy Sneller, an assistant professor of linguistics at Michigan State University, said there are other signs that young people already have a large collection of penny phrases. She is the project lead for MI Diary, an oral history collection program launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. It currently includes audio diaries from more than 2,000 people in Michigan, ranging in age from 3 to over 80 years old.
Sneller searched the collection and discovered that the youngest person to use penny-related idioms was 36 years old. However, the phrase “my two cents” is on the rise and is used by Gen Z and Gen Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024).
“I have no idea whether phrases like ‘penny-pincher’ will eventually go away, but that’s where I want to put my money,” Sneller said. “Now people would never say, ‘That person is a few shillings short of the pound,’ because ‘shilling’ is not a word we use. So if you call someone a penny pincher in 50 or 100 years, people might think, ‘What are you talking about?’
Is a penny worth it in the long run?
But some penny phrases may stand the test of time, says Matthew Gordon, a professor in the English department at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
“Expressions where ‘penny’ is used more loosely to refer to money, such as ‘worth a penny’ and ‘cost a good penny’, are likely to persist,” said Gordon, who is also director of the university’s linguistics program. “So you don’t remember the last time you actually used a penny to pay for something, or even had a penny in your pocket. And these phrases don’t seem to have diminished in value in an increasingly cashless society.”
An example of a currency that has remained in conversation beyond its actual use is the monetary unit “bit,” which is equivalent to 12.5 cents. The word remains part of proverbs such as “two-bit criminal,” Gordon said amid cheers of “two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar.”
Penny’s idiom can persist “even if the speaker doesn’t realize what it was originally referring to,” he says. “When we talk about ‘breaking the ice’, do people think of opening sea routes? Every email program has a ‘cc’ option, but when was the last time you kept a literal carbon copy of a message?”
The bottom line is, you may never know which penny phrases have staying power and which ones get dropped. “So even if there are days when Penny’s idiom is sane (another idiom, by the way!), it may be difficult to pinpoint why,” Duncan says.
He said, “Penny phrases can still be used and have social capital, even if the actual penny isn’t.”
Contributor: Greta Cross
Mike Snyder is a national trends news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, and X, and email him at: mike snyder & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com
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