32 by Ebenezer and Colonel Crow money, has value and should not be wasted. Benjamin Franklin, the man who offered lots of advice to Colonial Americans, helped to make this phrase popular in the mid-1700s, but its origins go deeper. It is one of A ave you ever heard the phrase time is money? It means that time, like many phrases related to money that have made their way into our everyday speechNow “bread and butter” refers At first, bread and butter was an easy meal. to.a job that helps put food on the table! Another interesting phrase $ G @., is bread and butter. Today, bread and butter is often served as a side dish to ©. main meal. In simpler times, : however, bread and butter might have served as an entire meal. = It was inexpensive and easy to prepare quickly. People could survive on a meal of bread and butter. The phrase began to mean a person's basic needs. From there, it evolved to mean a job or 8.) _ an activity that provides a way to meet one’s basic :. needs, For example, a pastry shop that makes most of its money selling donuts would consider donuts its bread and butter. A dime a dozen means commonplace or without any great value. The origins of this phrase may come from the 1800s, when a dime could buy 12 of certain items, such as eggs or pieces of fruit. And there’s drop a dime. Before indlividal cell phones were invented, people relied on public pay phones to make phone calls if they had to reach someone. Once com- monly found on most street comers, pay phones required payment to use them. It cost ten cents—a dime. Callers dropped a dime in the pay Before cell phones were common, phone’ slot. Dropping a dime evolved to mean informing on some- public pay phones made fe possible one, It was used to a describe an anonymous phone call made to alert fo stay in touch, You just needed a authorities about often-illegal activities. dime.‘Then there’s mint condition. It refers to something in perfect condition. ‘A mint is a place where new money is made, Until newly minted money is released into circulation, it has never been used by anyone. Today, people often use the phrase to refer to something old or from an earlier era that has é been restored to or kept at like-new conditions, such as a car or comic books. US. pennies originally Speaking of mints, the U.S, Mint produces the nation’s coins and official eee neon ‘commemorative medals. One-cent coins—11,178 of them—were the first PETITES WS. coins to be struck in 1793. The United States cals its one-cent coin a unos alicia: penny after the British penny, although the two coins are based on different values. For their first 50 years, U.S. pennies were much larger than they are today—about the size of a half dollar. One hundred years ago, Americans could buy as much with a penny as Americans today can buy with a quarter. Aricent greed) Some people think it’s time to eliminate the penny. They point out that it Pervon whe a ‘cost more to produce a penny—about 1.80 cents—than a penny is worth, But money and is 7 ‘cluctant spend other people are sentimental about them, What do you thinké means thrifty All this talk about the penny’s history is making us think about the many or careful with colorful sayings and phrases associated with it. One of our favorite sayings money is pinching pennies. It seems to have two opposing meanings, Generally, it means being careful with money so that every possible cent is saved. It can be used as an insult when it describes a miser. Or it can describe a frugal person who needs to be careful how he or she spends money. 5 Da a : Ses DACs aT <4 NY Ss RR tar aelstoltr Pedy ez) Moon eee Oey P22 oy Perce ett GF yi 2 : <3 eats) fi, rier) a a “To finally ae Pee et or ~ eer en ty Gecko ed ae Due ui ks oa ery a ee eC Ue OSI) 10 matter the «The story of the word dollar is pretty interesting, too, It begins in the 1500s By 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia (the Czech Republic today) had introduced coins made from silver mined from a town called Joachimsthal. Initially known as joachimsthalers, the coins became known simply as thalers. That shortened general name for coins of a similar size and weight spread to other parts of Europe. In the mid- 1500s, the Dutch introduced their version ofa thaler,a leeuwendaalder (lion thaler, for the lion stamped on the coin). When the first Dutch settlers arrived in the Americas in the early 1600s, they brought their daalders with them. ‘The Dutch were great traders. They established a thriving settlement in and around present-day New York City. Dutch daalders spread throughout the Colonies. Eventually, Great Britain asserted its control over most of the Atlantic Coast. Thalers and daalders became dollars in English. Dollars became a general term used by Americans to refer to commonly used coins of similar size and weight, such as the Spanish dollar coin. The Spanish dollar became one of the most familiar and trusted foreign coins for American colonists. And so, after gaining their freedom from Great Britain, Americans chose to use the word dollar for their new currency, rather than adopt the British pound. & I think “crow thaler” has a nice ring to it, don’t you? TOP: A Spanish dollar coin. ABOVE: The $1 note was first introduced in 1963. It ‘was one of the last Federal Reserve note denominations to be issued. Today, it is more commonly circulated than $1 coins.