🪙 No Pennies to Pinch—Now a Timely Title

 

When Marsha Franklin chose the title No Pennies to Pinch for a forthcoming book that we do still plan to publish, she was playing with metaphor: scarcity, thrift, and the emotional weight of small things. But now, the metaphor is literal. As of November 2025, the U.S. Mint has stopped producing pennies. The coin that once bore Lincoln’s profile and anchored idioms like “a penny for your thoughts” is slipping into history.

🌍 Global Echoes: When Small Coins Disappear

We’re not the first. Other countries have retired their lowest-denomination coins:

• Canada phased out its penny in 2013, adopting “symmetric rounding” for cash transactions.
• Australia removed 1- and 2-cent coins in 1992; New Zealand followed in 1990 and later dropped its 5-cent coin.
• Sweden began eliminating öre coins in the 1970s, embracing digital payments early.
• The Bahamas, Belgium, and Finland have also discontinued small coins, citing inflation and production costs.

In each case, the disappearance of the coin triggered shifts in pricing, payment habits, and even language.

🗣️ Linguistic Fallout: Idioms Without Anchors

What happens when the penny vanishes?

• Idioms lose their referents: “A penny saved…” becomes nostalgic. “Penny-pinching” may feel quaint or ironic.
• Pricing psychology shifts: Without 99-cent endings, retailers may rethink how they signal value.
• Cultural metaphors evolve: The penny once stood for humility, thrift, and overlooked worth. Its absence invites new symbols.

We’re watching a slow linguistic extinction—where phrases persist long after their literal anchors are gone. Like “dialing a phone” or “rolling down a window,” “penny” may linger as a ghost in our speech.

📚 The title now carries layered meaning:

• Literal: The penny is gone.
• Figurative: Scarcity, frugality, and the emotional calculus of small things.
• Historical: A nod to Franklin’s thrift and the fading currency of old wisdom.

If anything, the title that seemed clever appears to have been prophetic.

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