nuppencen.
/ˈnʌp(ə)ns/, U.S. /ˈnəp(ə)ns/ British colloquial.
No money; nothing.Use of the word has declined since the introduction of decimal coinage in Britain in 1971.
ΘΚΠ
society > trade and finance > money > sum of money > [noun] > no money
nuppence1883
1883 A. Lang in Longman's Mag. Sept. 517 The wrong copy..is..worth exactly ‘nuppence’ to the collector.
1886 A. Lang in Longman's Mag. Mar. 551 The Americans can get our books, and do get them, and republish them and give us nothing—that awful minus quantity, ‘nuppence’!
1964 Observer 20 Sept. 27/7 Living on nuppence.
1973 Times Lit. Suppl. 30 Mar. 347/4 For the appreciation of the novel, this information matters little more than nuppence.
1997 Independent (Nexis) 6 Sept. (Books section) 2 Perhaps a future translator will devise a better English equivalent than ‘lovence’, which sounds too like a chirpy declension from thruppence to tuppence and plenty of nuppence.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1883