dime
Americannoun
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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:
And yet you can’t bring yourself to spend a dime of it.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 16, 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
SEC, the commission insists it can strip defendants of their earnings—which it labels “ill-gotten gains”—even when no investor has lost a dime.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 19, 2026
I did not plan on taking a dime from my parents for college or anything else.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
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
“We have to do a better job to find those pennies out there—those pennies, nickels and dimes to save and not turn the lights on until you need to,” he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
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
“He was outstanding, he was gritty, he was gutsy, he made tough throw after tough throw, the rush was barreling down on him, he stood in there and was dropping dimes all day.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2024
I don’t refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate.
From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin
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.
