HALFPENNY (halfpence)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: halfpence   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does halfpenny mean? 

• HALFPENNY (noun)
  The noun HALFPENNY has 1 sense:

1. an English coin worth half a penny

  Familiarity information: HALFPENNY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HALFPENNY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An English coin worth half a penny

Classified under:

Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession

Synonyms:

ha'penny; halfpenny

Hypernyms ("halfpenny" is a kind of...):

coin (a flat metal piece (usually a disc) used as money)

 Context examples 

“Twopence-halfpenny,” says the landlord, “is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I gave him a halfpenny for himself, and I wish he hadn't taken it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What would they say, who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer, or my slices of pudding?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at the Sheriff “s Officer who had effected the capture. On his release, he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an entry of the transaction in his pocket-book—being very particular, I recollect, about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the total.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday night!) troubled me none the less because I went on.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, If I go into a cheesemonger's shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment—at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Now I was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny; now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey's daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul's struck one; now I was hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep's gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short—as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavour without any effect to prove to her.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)