penny-a-liner
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of penny-a-liner
1825–35; penny-a-line (of writing) paid for at the rate of a penny per line + -er 1
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.
MacDonald was an old penny-a-liner, with 50 or 60 paperback thunderations behind him, before he began the Travis McGee series more than a decade ago.
From Time Magazine Archive
After a few disastrous jobs in the Manhattan jungle, the apprentice author be came a penny-a-liner for the pulps; since then he has banged out 70 novels and some 600 short stories.
From Time Magazine Archive
Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms?
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864 by Various
The same endless night awaits a Plato and a penny-a-liner.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 by Various
I have heard pictures extolled as works of genius simply because they expressed, not because they nobly clothed in forms of art, ideas not beyond the reach of the average penny-a-liner.
From The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II by Barrington, Mrs. Russell
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.
