"tenpence to the shilling" meaning in All languages combined

See tenpence to the shilling on Wiktionary

Phrase [English]

Etymology: The British shilling was worth twelve pence, so tenpence would be a deficient exchange. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} tenpence to the shilling
  1. (UK, slang, dated) Mentally deficient. Tags: UK, dated, slang
    Sense id: en-tenpence_to_the_shilling-en-phrase-rA6uNKs2 Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for tenpence to the shilling meaning in All languages combined (1.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "The British shilling was worth twelve pence, so tenpence would be a deficient exchange.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "tenpence to the shilling",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1909, Edward R. Hartley, Train Talks, page 4",
          "text": "I knew that chap; but he never was more nor tenpence to the shilling. He was one of the men, we say, who fell out of his cradle and knocked his head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1951, Crichton Porteous, Wild Acres, page 203",
          "text": "He felt no curiosity about news or daily events, and was getting to be looked on as 'tenpence to the shilling' in the head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Ruth Hamilton, A Whisper To The Living",
          "text": "Whenever he did manage to engineer a meeting she always treated him as if he was only tenpence to the shilling, a few bricks short of a load, as if he needed another brain cell to qualify as a plant.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Mentally deficient."
      ],
      "id": "en-tenpence_to_the_shilling-en-phrase-rA6uNKs2",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, slang, dated) Mentally deficient."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "dated",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "tenpence to the shilling"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "The British shilling was worth twelve pence, so tenpence would be a deficient exchange.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "tenpence to the shilling",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English dated terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1909, Edward R. Hartley, Train Talks, page 4",
          "text": "I knew that chap; but he never was more nor tenpence to the shilling. He was one of the men, we say, who fell out of his cradle and knocked his head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1951, Crichton Porteous, Wild Acres, page 203",
          "text": "He felt no curiosity about news or daily events, and was getting to be looked on as 'tenpence to the shilling' in the head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Ruth Hamilton, A Whisper To The Living",
          "text": "Whenever he did manage to engineer a meeting she always treated him as if he was only tenpence to the shilling, a few bricks short of a load, as if he needed another brain cell to qualify as a plant.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Mentally deficient."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, slang, dated) Mentally deficient."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "dated",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "tenpence to the shilling"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.