British slang, now obsolete, for a penny -- specifically one of the old pre-decimal pennies.
British slang, now obsolete, for a penny -- specifically one of the old pre-decimal pennies. The word was used in street slang and thieves' cant, particularly associated with market traders and itinerant sellers in Victorian London. It survives in historical accounts of urban low life and old glossaries of English cant vocabulary. Fell out of use as the pre-decimal currency disappeared.
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UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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An obsolete British slang term for a farthing, the smallest denomination of British pre-decimal currency — worth one quarter of a penny. The word is a diminutive formation, reinforcing the coin's negligible value. It appears in 18th and 19th-century slang dictionaries and literary works depicting working-class or criminal slang, where coins of every denomination had their own vocabulary. The farthing itself was withdrawn from circulation in 1960, taking most of its slang synonyms with it.
British archaic slang for small change — coins of little individual value. The phrase conjures the image of a street musician passing a hat and collecting whatever people tossed in: pennies, halfpennies, the occasional threepence. It speaks to a transaction conducted in the smallest denominations, the kind of money you pull from the bottom of your pocket without looking. While largely archaic, it occasionally surfaces in historical fiction or when someone wants a period-flavored way to describe loose coins.
(obsolete, British, Irish) A coin worth ten old pence.
He wouldn't give a saltee for the whole lot, called it garbage and walked on.
(UK, obsolete, slang) A penny.
"saltee" means: A penny.. This is informal slang, common in casual speech, texting and social media, but not appropriate for school work, applications or professional settings. There is no real cause for concern in itself; it is everyday peer vocabulary. If your child uses it, a light comment about audience and register is usually enough — no need to escalate. Context, more than the word, tells you whether to follow up.
"saltee" means: A penny.. Register: informal slang, fine in casual conversation, texting and social media but not in academic essays, business writing or formal speech. Note the regional or dialect label (UK) — usage may sound odd outside that variety. A common non-native mistake is to use the word in the wrong register, or to assume one fixed meaning when it is actually polysemous; always check the surrounding register and the audience before producing it yourself. In formal writing, prefer a neutral synonym or a short descriptive phrase, and use this word only when you have heard or read it being used naturally in a comparable context.
A delightfully obscure piece of old British slang for a sixpence — the small silver coin worth six old pennies that circulated until decimalisation in 1971. The origin of the phrase is debated, but it fits into a long tradition of British rhyming and whimsical slang for coins. A sow's baby might have been humorous shorthand born from the pig's associations with small, round, pink things — though the exact logic of Victorian and Georgian slang rarely needs to be airtight to stick.