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
A penny-a-liner heard—with a not unnatural choler— That he of all invention was apparently bereft; And so he up and told them that a smart left-handed bowler, "Manipulates the leather with the left!"
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105, August 12th 1893 by Various
But the American penny-a-liner, our readers know, does the thing on the vast scale of his country.
From International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 by Various
There were also intromissions with a certain company of players then resident in Dumfries, and writings of such prologues for their second-rate pieces, as many a penny-a-liner could have done to order as well.
From Robert Burns by Shairp, John Campbell
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.
