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.
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
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
Winter, go and bring joy to the heart of some penny-a-liner by giving him that item.
From The Stowmarket Mystery Or, A Legacy of Hate by Louis Tracy
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 John Campbell Shairp
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
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
