| 释义 |
pence|pɛns|
a. collective plural of penny, q.v. for forms and simple senses. Used also in a few compounds, as pence-collection, pence-dealing, etc.; pence-encumbered, pence-paying adjs.; † pence-lack, lack of pence, want of money; pence-table, an arithmetical table indicating the number of shillings or pounds equivalent to given numbers of pence.
1393Langl. P. Pl. C. xxii. 378 Somme þorw pans-delynge [B. xix. 374 penyes delynge]. 1399― Rich. Redeles iii. 142 For þey..makeþ þe peple ffor pens lac in pointe ffor to wepe. 1834Tait's Mag. I. 43/1 Entertainments got up for the relief of pence-encumbered pockets. 1861Dickens Gt. Expect. ix, [He] put me through my pence-table from ‘twelve pence make one shilling’. 1894Westm. Gaz. 11 Sept. 2/1 Their painful pence-collection likened itself in my mind to O'Connell's repeal-rent. 1899Athenæum 21 Oct. 548/1 Two insular and pence-paying realms.
b. Applied colloq. as sing., orig. to a ‘new penny’ of the decimal currency introduced in 1971 (see penny 1), and hence gen.
1971Record (Oxf. Univ. Press) Dec. 10/2 The computer was found to be rounding up to the nearest pence the Bank Code Numbers on the Wages Slips. 1973Daily Tel. 24 Oct. 16 In our village shop a customer asked for some small change but the shopkeeper was unable to oblige as she was very short or ‘two pences and one pences’. 1974Ibid. 19 Dec. 12 In shops and elsewhere I often hear the ungrammatical term ‘one pence’. I presume this is because the occurrence of a single penny is becoming a thing of the past. 1975M. Bradbury History Man i. 3 She leads her daily deputation to the manager with comparative, up-to-the-minute lists showing how Fine Fare, on lard, is one pence up on Sainsbury's, or vice versa. 1977Times Lit. Suppl. 29 Apr. 528/3 The new and the supplemented lexical entries equally reflect the times, with..p (but not the singular use of pence) for new penny. 1979Daily Tel. 11 Apr. 2/1 A taxi passenger who refused to pay an extra charge of one pence on his fare..was killed by the driver, police said in Manila. |