tenpence to the shilling
phraseEtymology
The British shilling was worth twelve pence, so tenpence would be a deficient exchange.
Definitions
Mentally deficient.
- 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.
- He felt no curiosity about news or daily events, and was getting to be looked on as 'tenpence to the shilling' in the head.
- 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.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for tenpence to the shilling. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA