Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A penny is a unit of currency. A penny is: a division of the British pound sterling or the Irish Pound (1971-2001), 100 pence = 1 pound a division of the British pound sterling or Irish Pound prior to February 15, 1971, and also the pre-decimalisation currencies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound the common name for a one-cent piece in the United States and Canada. When dealing with British money, amounts of the decimal "new pence" less than £1 may be suffixed with "p," as in 2p, 5p, 26p, 72p. Pre-1971 amounts of less than 1/- (one shilling) were denoted with a "d" which derived from the term "denarius," as in 2d, 6d, 10d. The plural of "penny" is "pence" when referring to a quantity of money and "pennies" when referring to a number of coins. Thus a coin worth five times as much as one penny is worth five pence, but it is not five pennies, since "five pennies" means five coins each of which is a penny. In the USA, "penny" is normally used only to refer to the coin; the quantity of money is a "cent". A coin worth five times as much as a penny is worth "five cents". See also: 1943 Steel Penny History of the English penny coin, AD 785-1971 United States coinage This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.