twopenny
twopenny adjective: having a value or cost of twopence.
Adjective
twopenny (not comparable)
- Having a value or cost of twopence.
- Cheap; worthless; petty.
- A pretty degree of knighthood, sir, is that which can be bought with sugar-hogs-heads! and then your twopenny marquisates1888, James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, page 145
- As the door slammed Pete turned to Hally, fuming. "Can you tie that? A little twopenny cold frightening him off."1940, Woman's Home Companion, volume 67, numbers 1-4, page 134
Noun
twopenny (countable and uncountable, plural twopennies)
- A coin or stamp worth two pence.
- When the Gauls attacked Rome, he hit upon the plan of pelting the soldiers with twopennies to make them believe they had plenty to eat.1852, Edward Litt L. Blanchard, Freaks and follies of fabledom, page 93
- Ale sold for two pence per quart.
- A person's head.
- "It flew all to pieces; and didn't we get it! But look here, Merry, are you on?"
"Yes; tuck in your twopenny."
"No springing, mind."1880, Our Boys' Paper, page 411
- "It flew all to pieces; and didn't we get it! But look here, Merry, are you on?"
Forms of twopenny
| plural | twopennies |
|---|
Origin of twopenny
* From two + penny. * (head): George Orwell explains this in Down and Out in Paris and London as rhyming slang: head > loaf of bread > twopenny loaf > twopenny.
Words formed from twopenny
Phrases with twopenny
Questions about twopenny
- What does twopenny mean?
- Twopenny means having a value or cost of twopence.
- What part of speech is twopenny?
- Twopenny can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near twopenny in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: twopenny (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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