pfennig
Americannoun
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pfennigs,
plural
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pfennige
plural
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a copper-coated iron coin and monetary unit of Germany until the euro was adopted, one 100th of a Deutsche mark.
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(formerly) a minor coin and monetary unit of East Germany, one 100th of an ostmark.
noun
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a former German monetary unit worth one hundredth of a Deutschmark
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(formerly) a monetary unit worth one hundredth of an East German ostmark
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pfennig
First recorded in 1540–50; from German: penny
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:
Jürgen Klopp should therefore decide to make do, and spend every precious pfennig of his summer pot on a top-drawer replacement for the woefully erratic Dejan Lovren instead.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 28, 2017
Maybe the pfennig will drop and he’ll resort to putting his German center half up front in the waning minutes.
From New York Times ● May 14, 2011
West Germany has agreed in principle to offer "host support" but has yet to appropriate a pfennig.
From Time Magazine Archive
It was a grand party last week, except for one Astor who complained: "They have all that money over there in America, and they never gave me a pfennig."
From Time Magazine Archive
Many of them are secondhand, all the classics for example, one volume in blue cloth boards cost one mark twenty pfennig.
From "All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel" by Erich Maria Remarque
In actual coins, 1 gold schilling = 3 silver schillingen = 36 pfennige.
From The History of Currency, 1252 to 1896 by William Arthur Shaw
I collected pfennige in a hat which the violinist then put on his head, pfennigs and all.
From Confessions of an Opera Singer by Kathleen Howard
At last it came to this, I was to give six pfennige, to which I replied again, 'I have not a single pfennig.'
From Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I. by Gustav Freytag
Besides these coins, the ordinance recognised temporarily a whole series of then-current pfennige.
From The History of Currency, 1252 to 1896 by William Arthur Shaw
I may mention, that the binding of an 18mo. volume in boards, covered in paper, cost one groschen, eight pfennige, or, as nearly as it can be calculated, twopence in English money.
From A Tramp's Wallet stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France by William Duthie
Breakfast from 6am to 1pm, 75 pfennigs, one cup of coffee…
From Economist ● Mar. 8, 2018
Regardless, the value of the 1936 Olympic Games couldn’t be measured in marks and pfennigs.
From Slate ● Feb. 9, 2018
When Erna Sack, a comely blonde stenographer in Berlin, saved her pfennigs to study voice, she thought she was a mezzo-soprano.
From Time Magazine Archive
In pre-war days 87 pfennigs would buy an Austrian crown, to-day it takes more than a mark to buy a crown.
From Time Magazine Archive
At one point a number of girls pressed round the carriages offering glasses of milk at 20 pfennigs.
From Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben by Henry Charles Mahoney
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.
