Word.ws English Dictionary

plug nickel

plug nickel noun: a nearly worthless amount.

Noun

plug nickel (plural plug nickels)

  1. (US, colloquial) A nearly worthless amount.
    • Others estimate that each consumer's data is virtually worthless to the consumer; "Most of [consumers'] information, on an open market, is not worth a plug nickel," said Bruce Belair, a Washington-based lawyer.1997 March 6, Neil Munro, “Putting a Price Tag on Privacy”, in washingtontechnology.com, retrieved 28 Sep 2008
    • The Senate can easily release these MTA bonds to the financial markets to stop subway fare hikes—and it won't cost the state a plug nickel.2002 February 19, “Opinion: State Must Fast-track MTA $ Plan”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 28 Sep 2008

Synonyms of plug nickel

Forms of plug nickel

pluralplug nickels
alternative formplugged nickel

Origin of plug nickel

Some early United States coins (minted in the 18th and 19th centuries) were made with a small silver disc added to the center of the coin in the planchet (blank metal) before striking. This was done to increase the value of the metal in the coin up to the coin's face value. A plug nickel or plugged nickel is a nickel (now a five-cent coin, but originally a one-cent coin and later a three-cent coin) where the silver (center disc) has been harvested and replaced “plugged” with a different material, thus decreasing the metal value of the coin. People would often examine their change after a cash transaction to ensure they did not receive such a coin. While the reported relation to tampered coins sounds reasonable, it is not fully satisfactory. Minting of the familiar 5-cent “nickel” coin began in 1866 and continues today. These "nickels" never contained any precious metal (except for silver, briefly, during WW2). Why anyone would “plug” a nickel coin remains mysterious. Conceivably, the plugged nickel was imagined as something that would be even more worthless than a plugged dollar, etc. (Other than the 1792 one cent pattern coin, the US mint never produced bimetallic plugged coins...

Words formed from plug nickel

Questions about plug nickel

What does plug nickel mean?
Plug nickel means a nearly worthless amount.
What part of speech is plug nickel?
Plug nickel is a noun.
What is the plural of plug nickel?
The plural of plug nickel is plug nickels.

Words near plug nickel in the dictionary

  1. plug doors
  2. plug hat
  3. plug hats
  4. plug in
  5. plug into
  6. plug nickel
  7. plug nickels
  8. plug out
  9. plug point
  10. plug rod
  11. plug rods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plug nickel (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: “plug nickel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plug_nickel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.