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:
Others will see every last dime go through Uncle Sam.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 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
Instead, he held that the guards had not “consented” to be sued for damages, so Landor could not recover a dime from them.
From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2026
Electrospray thrusters are tiny rocket engines, roughly the size of a dime.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 10, 2026
Stuart never paid any fare on buses, because he wasn’t big enough to carry an ordinary dime.
From "Stuart Little" by E.B. White
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
The 1965 Coinage Act ended the use of silver in dimes and quarters and cut the amount in 50-cent pieces to 40% from 90%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 9, 2025
At that time in the 1960s, dimes, quarters and half dollars had roughly 0.725 ounces of silver per $1 of coin value.
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 carried her bags to the bus and received three haughty dimes.
From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
Definitions 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.
