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
And yet you can’t bring yourself to spend a dime of it.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 16, 2026
Then he tried to focus his eyes so that he could read the mottoes on the nickel and dime.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
The overall energy of the trip and the relationships strengthened by shared experience are worth much more than the nickels and dimes you won’t miss in the long run.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
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
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
Among those who were apparently educated on the taxpayers’ dimes is Secretary McMahon, a North Carolina native who holds a degree from East Carolina University, a public institution supported by the taxpayers of North Carolina.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2025
The dimes he’d paid us before had seemed pretty real.
From Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm
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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.
