Re: What is "Silver" in pocket change?

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Don Phillipson" <d.phillipson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

(NB: these words were established in everyday use before such metals
as nickel or zinc were employed for coinage. Before the First World
War coins were either gold, silver or bronze (i.e. only partly
copper.)

Interesting. I had always taken "(not worth a) brass farthing" at
face value, but I see from the Wikipedia entry that, with one
exception in the 17th century in which a plug of brass was inserted,
and another at the end of that century in which they were tin, from
the seventeenth century on, they were always either copper (through
1860) or bronze.

I think the word "brass" may have got into that expression from a
popular confusion of brass and bronze. But there's also the Br slang
(formerly standard) "brass"="money", where it's quite possible that the
cheaper metal was chosen for rhetorical effect: cf obsolescent "tin"
with the same meaning.

I assume the not inexpensive "tin" was chosen as a slang term for metal
in general, but especially for thin steel, in allusion to tinned steel.
(Take a bow, the now run-down town of Kidwelly: little Wales underpinned
the world in them days, bychan.)

--
Mike.


.

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