Dime language
L.A. Wotherspoon of Swan River, Man., sent me some coin rubbings to show me the relative sizes of a small five-cent piece and a large one-cent coin back in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The rubbing of the one cent has an imprint of the head of Queen Victoria and is dated 1888. The small five-cent piece, about 1.5 centimetres across, is worn to the point that it’s difficult to see a date. He agrees the small coin was easy to lose.
He does take issue with me referring to the small five-cent piece as a nickel.
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He says the coin (smaller than the current 10-cent piece) was minted of silver, not nickel. And he rejects the practice (as in my column of Feb. 4) of calling a 10-cent piece a dime.
“Dime is a U.S. word, ” said he.
Maybe it is, but Canadians have adopted the term. I hear Canadians saying:
“Brother, can you spare a dime?”
“Not one thin dime.”
“Why not go to the five and dime?’
“Give me a dime’s worth of jawbreakers.”
“We’ll nickel and dime that team until we beat them.”
“Got a dime for the meter?”
“For our fund-raiser let’s stage a dime a dance.”
“He could turn on a dime with that car.”
“You paid $5 for that? It isn’t worth a dime.”
We still maintain our independence from the Americans by saying zed and leftenant but, let’s face it, we’ve adopted the dime.
