Word.ws English Dictionary

threepenny bit

/ˈθɹʌpəni bɪt/

threepenny bit noun: a former (pre-decimalisation) British or Irish coin worth three old pennies.

Noun

threepenny bit (plural threepenny bits)

  1. (historical) A former (pre-decimalisation) British or Irish coin worth three old pennies.
    • All day long he worked, cutting out pennies and shillings and half-crowns and threepenny-bits.1934, P[amela] L[yndon] Travers, “East Wind”, in Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins; 1), London: Gerald Howe Ltd […], →OCLC, pages 3–4
  2. (Cockney, slang) A woman's breast; a tit.
    • All these skinny modern chicks with their perky threepenny bits do nothing for me.1983, Robert Drewe, The Bodysurfers, Penguin, published 2009, page 86

Synonyms of threepenny bit

Forms of threepenny bit

pluralthreepenny bits
alternative formthreepenny-bit
alternative formthree-penny bit

Questions about threepenny bit

What does threepenny bit mean?
Threepenny bit means a former (pre-decimalisation) British or Irish coin worth three old pennies.
What part of speech is threepenny bit?
Threepenny bit is a noun.
How do you pronounce threepenny bit?
Threepenny bit is pronounced /ˈθɹʌpəni bɪt/ (UK).
What is the plural of threepenny bit?
The plural of threepenny bit is threepenny bits.

Words near threepenny bit in the dictionary

  1. threepeats
  2. threepence
  3. threepences
  4. threepennies
  5. threepenny
  6. threepenny bit
  7. threepenny bits
  8. threepenny-bit
  9. threepenny-bits
  10. threepennyworth
  11. threepennyworths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: threepenny bit (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-threepenny-bit.ogg.

Cite this entry: “threepenny bit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/threepenny_bit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.