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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... As nice as ninepence
Neat, tidy, well-ordered.
The variants, ‘as right as ninepence’ and ‘as neat as
ninepence’ are just as common as the ‘nice’ version
(also, less commonly, ‘as clean as ninepence’ and ‘as
grand as ninepence’) and it isn’t clear which came first.
There are suggestions that this expression derives from
from ‘as nice as ninepins’. In the game of Ninepins
(Skittles) the pins are set out in a square. For the game
to be fair this must be done neatly and accurately or,
in the old parlance, nicely. That derivation is attractive
but seems unlikely, as there is no early records of ‘as
nice as ninepins’ in print, which we might expect if the
‘ninepence’ version derived from it. The ‘ninepins’ form,
in the guise of ‘as smart as ninepins’ isn’t found until the
20th century, so it is reasonable to assume that it is a
simple mishearing of the earlier ‘as neat/clean/grand as
ninepence’ versions.
The earliest known recorded form of the phrase is ‘as
neat as ninepence’; the first citation is in James Howell’s
English Proverbs, 1659:
“As fine as fippence, as neat as nine pence.”
The ‘fippence’ (five pence) here makes it clear that the
reference is to money rather than to skittles. For it to
appear in a list of sayings viewed as proverbial it must
have been in existence for some time before 1659. There
was a ninepence coin in circulation in the 16th and 17th
centuries, although there was nothing especially neat or
nice about it. The rhyming and alliterative style of the
citation suggests that the ‘neat’ and ‘nice’ were chosen
just for that reason.
The form ‘as nice as ninepence’ didn’t arise until recently,
in the late 20th century.
Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
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