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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 2481464, member: 11668&quot;]Eh, I guess one man&#039;s made-up word is another man&#039;s useful new coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t actually know how long &quot;printage&quot; has been in use to mean &quot;quantity printed&quot; (does anyone know when it was made up?), but the analogy with &quot;mintage&quot; seems a good one.&nbsp; Both &quot;minting&quot; and &quot;mintage&quot; are words, with different meanings (the process of striking coins vs. the quantity of coins struck), so it seems useful for collectors of paper money to have the same distinction available, rather than making &quot;printing&quot; do double duty.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hmm...actually, poking around a bit, it seems that even the sense &quot;mintage&quot; = &quot;quantity minted&quot; is fairly new--the <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/118966?redirectedFrom=mintage#eid" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/118966?redirectedFrom=mintage#eid" rel="nofollow">online OED</a>&#039;s first citation in that sense is from 1971!&nbsp; The usage isn&#039;t actually that recent, is it?&nbsp; Most of the OED&#039;s earlier senses for the word sound rather old-fashioned now, at least to my ear:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p><i>Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, about 240 b.c., ordered the mintage of metallic coins.</i></p><p><i>A timely withdrawal of the worn coins may lead to the substitution of a better class of mintages.</i></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not sure anyone would still use &quot;mintage&quot; in these contexts today.&nbsp; I&#039;d probably choose &quot;minting&quot; and &quot;coinage&quot; respectively.&nbsp; I dunno, maybe I just haven&#039;t read enough old numismatic publications.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for &quot;printage&quot;, you&#039;re correct that it doesn&#039;t seem to be in any dictionaries I can find.&nbsp; The oldest dated usage I can track down with a few quick Google searches is from an article in the <a href="https://www.spmc.org/journals/paper-money-vol-xvi-no-3-whole-no-69-may-june-1977" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.spmc.org/journals/paper-money-vol-xvi-no-3-whole-no-69-may-june-1977" rel="nofollow">May-June 1977 issue of Paper Money</a>, though, so it may be nearly as old as the similar usage of &quot;mintage&quot;....&nbsp; And in 2006 no less than <a href="http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n51a27.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n51a27.html" rel="nofollow">Dave Bowers suggested</a> that &quot;printage&quot; should be more widely used, so I think I have pretty good authority for using it.&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie7" alt=":p" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>(Apologies for hijacking the forum thread with etymological musings.&nbsp; I just got finished grading my last stack of final exams for the summer term, so my brain&#039;s a bit far gone just now....)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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