Word.ws English Dictionary

old penny

old penny noun: the pre-decimalisation United Kingdom penny, ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling. Symbol: d.

Noun

old penny (plural old pence or old pennies)

  1. The pre-decimalisation United Kingdom penny, ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling. Symbol: d
  2. The pre-decimalisation Irish penny, ¹⁄₂₄₀ of an Irish pound. Symbol: d
  3. A coin worth one old penny.

Forms of old penny

pluralold pence
pluralold pennies

Origin of old penny

Retronym for penny to avoid confusion with the new penny.

Questions about old penny

What does old penny mean?
Old penny means the pre-decimalisation United Kingdom penny, ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling. Symbol: d.
What part of speech is old penny?
Old penny is a noun.
What is the plural of old penny?
The plural of old penny is old pence.

Words near old penny in the dictionary

  1. old one
  2. Old Orchard Beach
  3. Old Passage
  4. old pence
  5. old pennies
  6. old penny
  7. old people
  8. old people's home
  9. old people's homes
  10. Old Perlican
  11. Old Persian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old 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.

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