dime
Americannoun
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dimes
plural
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a cupronickel-clad coin of the U.S. and Canada, the 10th part of a dollar, equal to 10 cents.
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Slang.
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ten dollars.
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a 10-year prison sentence.
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idioms
noun
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a coin of the US and Canada, worth one tenth of a dollar or ten cents
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very cheap or common
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of dime
1350–1400; Middle English < Anglo-French, Old French di ( s ) me < Latin decima tenth part, tithe, noun use of feminine of decimus tenth, derivative of decem ten
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Opinions are a dime a dozen, but personal stories are precious and much harder to argue with.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The 70 family shareholders come back for the company’s annual meeting; the extended family, every five years on the company’s dime.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
Hence her latest caper, which begins with a mission to track down a vintage desk and turns on a dime into a heist tied to a cache of gold.
From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026
Telling me your overall retirement balance is $1.3 million is fine, but detailing the breakdown of your various accounts to the dime and what funds you’re invested in is too much.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
Sometimes we’d find a buffalo nickel, a Mercury dime, or an Indian head penny.
From "Fish in a Tree" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
The most expensive item is Monroe's gold-toned 1950s cylindrical minaudiere purse carrying her tiny hair comb, a tube of lipstick, eight Philip Morris cigarettes and 1940s dimes.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
Traders bundled silver dimes, quarters and half-dollars in face-value increments and launched an arcane—not to mention bulky—asset class.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 9, 2025
The bags contain dimes, quarters and half dollars.
From Barron's ● Oct. 20, 2025
“Their discs sell like dimes going for a nickel,” Florabel Muir reported in the Los Angeles Mirror in January 1952.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2025
I kept the two dimes from the change to save up for our phone call.
From "One Crazy Summer" by Rita Williams-Garcia
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
