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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 136145, member: 4626&quot;]See you like to be picky about semantics lol...</p><p><br /></p><p>The US inherited the term &quot;penny&quot; from Britan; it was commonly used for our cent, and still is, even though it is not the official term for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>The old British system was 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, or 240 pence to the pound.&nbsp; (&quot;Pence&quot; signifies an amount of money; &quot;penny&quot; refers to the coin worth one pence.)&nbsp; Since Britain decimalized their currency in 1971, it is now a simple 100 pence = 1 pound system.&nbsp; They could call their penny a cent accuarately now if they chose, but they don&#039;t... see no reason why we can&#039;t still keep calling our cent a penny.&nbsp; After all, words mean whatever the general consesus takes them to mean; grammatical rules aren&#039;t set in stone by some official committee.</p><p><br /></p><p>I find it ironic that what a lot of British people refer to as &quot;Americanisms&quot; are actually words and phrases that originated in Britain, but we kept using them after they stopped, or use them in a way differently than they do.&nbsp; Since now their penny equals 1/100 of a pound, I don&#039;t see what the big deal calling out cent, 1/100 of a dollar, a penny also.&nbsp; It&#039;s an accurate term, now, since it refers to the same fraction of the base unit as the British penny does, whether it be the official term or not.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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