You searched for: “coin
coin (noun); coin, coins, coining, coined (verb forms)
1. A flat round piece of metal with special designs on it, authorized by a government to be used as money.
2. Usually a circular flat piece of metal stamped with its value as money.
3. Money in the form of coins rather than paper bills or checks.
4. To devise or to use a word or phrase that no one has used before; that is, to coin a phrase to coin a new word.
5. Etymology: from about 1300, "a wedge", from Old French coing (12th century), "a wedge, a stamp, a piece of money; a corner, an angle"; from Latin cuneus, "a wedge".

The die for stamping metal was wedge-shaped, and the English word came to mean "a thing stamped, a piece of money" by the late 14th century. The verb meaning "to coin money" is from the mid-14th century and "to coin a phrase", is from the late 16th century.

This entry is located in the following unit: cune-, cuneo-, cunei- + (page 1)