Word.ws English Dictionary

death penny

Syllables: death pen·nyUK/ˈdɛθ ˌpɛni/

death penny noun: a coin placed on the eyelid of a deceased person to keep the eye closed.

Noun

death penny (plural death pennies)

  1. (historical, plural-normally) A coin placed on the eyelid of a deceased person to keep the eye closed.
    • Afterwards the other seemed to die too, the breath leaving his body, the blood ebbing from his cheek, until his enemy came and stood one day looking down upon him, while he looked back from half-closed eyes, upon which they had already put death pennies, to keep down the lids.1897, Riccardo Stephens, “Ad Finem”, in The Jubilee Book of the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh: [Philosophical Institution] […], →OCLC, page 61
    • He told me how in the oldest graves "death pennies," once used to close the eyes of the corpse, are found.[1926], R[obert] Thurston Hopkins, The Literary Landmarks of Devon & Cornwall, London: C. Palmer, →OCLC, page 179
  2. (Greek, Roman) Synonym of Charon's obol (“a coin placed in or on the mouth of a deceased person as a bribe or payment for Charon, the ferryman of Hades”).
    • You will not see him now, till a pinch of dust has been sprinkled on your brow, and the death-penny put into your mouth. Then, when you have crossed the dark river, he will be waiting for you on the other side.1863, G[eorge] J[ohn] Whyte-Melville, “Winged Words”, in The Gladiators: A Tale of Rome and Judæa. […], volume I (Eros), London: Longman, Green, Longmans, Roberts, & Green, →OCLC, page 282
    • "They will escape you yet, if you are not careful, and be off to their native woods." The soldier shook his head. "I have tied them fast," he said, "and they have no death-penny in their mouths to pay the ferryman to take them over the dark river."[1873], Emma Leslie [pseudonym; Emma Boultwood], “The Attack on the Romans”, in The Captives, London: Sunday School Union […]; New York, N.Y.: Thomas Nelson & Sons, […], →OCLC, page 32
    Synonyms:
    Charon's obol
  3. (UK, World-War-I, informal) The memorial plaque, a circular bronze plaque presented to the next of kin of British Empire personnel killed in World War I.
    • Government-inspired tokens of appreciation, such as the so-called ‘death penny’ or bronze plaque announced in 1918 and finally distributed in 1919 to next of kin, were not always accepted with the gratitude expected. Violet Baker had lost her beloved husband, Sam, and she was in no mood to be...2011, Richard van Emden, “‘Least Said, Soonest Mended’”, in The Quick and the Dead: Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the Great War, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, published 2012, →ISBN, page 316
    • For those who did not come back, many families were to receive a bronze memorial plaque—the ‘Death Penny’—and an illuminated scroll, purporting to be from King George V. […] [T]hey became the tangible last abiding memento that their loved ones had ever existed in this world and that their exit from...2015, Gavin Hughes, “The Cost and Legacy, 1914–1918”, in Fighting Irish: The Irish Regiments in the First World War, Sallins, County Kildare, Ireland: Merrion Press, →ISBN

Examples of death penny in a sentence

  • I think for most people it's the starting point: it's the grandmother telling you a story about the great-uncle that you never knew, or the photograph on the wall, or the death penny.2018, Jonathan Evershed, Ghosts of the Somme: Commemoration and Culture War in Northern Ireland, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame...
  • The older of my brothers has Charles as a middle name and Charlie's "Death Penny" was always displayed at our family home.'2024, Ann-Marie Foster, “Extending Legacy”, in Family Mourning After War and Disaster in Twentieth-century Britain, Oxford, Oxfordshire...

Synonyms of death penny

Forms of death penny

pluraldeath pennies

Origin of death penny

From death + penny. Noun sense 3 (“memorial plaque”) refers to its superficial resemblance to the one-penny coin (which was much smaller) in circulation in the United Kingdom at the time.

Questions about death penny

What does death penny mean?
Death penny means a coin placed on the eyelid of a deceased person to keep the eye closed.
How do you use death penny in a sentence?
I think for most people it's the starting point: it's the grandmother telling you a story about the great-uncle that you never knew, or the photograph on the wall, or the death penny.
What part of speech is death penny?
Death penny is a noun.
How do you pronounce death penny?
Death penny is pronounced /ˈdɛθ ˌpɛni/ (UK).
What is the plural of death penny?
The plural of death penny is death pennies.

Words near death penny in the dictionary

  1. death panel
  2. death panels
  3. death penalties
  4. death penalty
  5. death pennies
  6. death penny
  7. death pile
  8. death piles
  9. death pit
  10. death plane
  11. death play

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death penny (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-death penny.wav.

Cite this entry: “death penny.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death_penny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.