Penny

The penny is among the lowest denomination of coins in circulation.

• 1⁄₁₀₀ of the British pound sterling (see British one penny coin), the former Irish pound, the Gibraltar pound, the Saint Helena pound, the Falkland Islands pound, or a coin with that value: see History of the English penny.
• 1⁄₂₄₀ of the British pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation on 15 February 1971, of the Pound Scots prior to 1707, and also the pre-decimalisation currencies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (1⁄₁₂ of the shilling), or a coin of that value.
• A common colloquial name for the one-cent coin currently used in the United States and formerly used in Canada, worth 1⁄₁₀₀ of the dollar: see Penny (U.S. coin), Penny (Canadian coin).

In addition, variants of the word penny, with which they share a common root, are or were the names of certain units of currency in non-English-speaking countries:

• A fening is 1⁄₁₀₀ of a Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark
• A Pfennig was 1⁄₁₀₀ of a German Mark and is sometimes still used by Germans as the name for the 1c coin of the Euro
• A penni was 1⁄₁₀₀ of a Finnish markka

In the United States and Canada, "penny" is normally used to refer to a "cent." Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the plural of "penny" is "pence" when referring to a quantity of money and "pennies" when referring to a number of coins. Thus a coin worth five times as much as one penny is worth five pence, but "five pennies" means five coins, each of which is a penny.

When dealing with British or Irish (pound) money, amounts of the decimal "new pence" less than £1 may be suffixed with "p", as in 2p, 5p, 26p, 72p. Pre-1971 amounts of less than 1/- (one shilling) were denoted with a "d" which derived from the term "denarius", as in 2d, 6d, 10d.

Irish pound decimal coinage only used "p" to designate units (possibly as this sufficed for both the English word "pence", and Irish form "pingin").