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
In fact no phase of the Negro's life fails of discussion at the hands of the most flippant penny-a-liner as well as the gravest thinker.
From Twentieth Century Negro Literature Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro by Culp, Daniel Wallace
Mr. Hughes speaks, in the style of a penny-a-liner, of Tennyson's "amazing and unparalleled popular influence."
From Flowers of Freethought (Second Series) by Foote, G. W. (George William)
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 Tracy, Louis
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.
