Half Dime or Half Disme?

PCGS_SocialMedia

The two names surely seem to be related and they both relate back to the small, silver five-cent coins of early United States Mint vintage. But why are there spelling variances like this, and how does one even pronounce “disme” anyway?

As then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson described, “the most easy ratio of multiplication and division is that of ten.” And “10” is a critical numerical component of the decimal system as proposed in the 1585 book La Disme by French mathematician Simon Stevin of Bruges.

The lucky few in the public who got to handle the new coins widely embraced them but had trouble in pronouncing the French-origin name of the new denomination, the half disme, which carries a silent “s” and “e” and is phonetically read as “deem.” In short order, the revised name, “dime,” was officially adopted for both the five-cent and ten-cent coins and by 1794, when the next run of half dimes and first batch of dimes officially hit production at the United States Mint, the “disme” spelling had been dropped in favor of the Americanized “dime.”

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ricko

A timely article.... periodically, this does come up as a forum topic. I recall first seeing it around 2002 or near there... that is when I learned it was 'deem'..... Cheers, RickO

keets

Dime or Disme doesn't matter, they're both pronounced the same in English. the whole "deem" thing has been rehashed here ad nauseum and the point remains that we speak English and chose to pronounce it Dime. below is a pronounciation link for everyone. FWIW the oldest dictionary reference I could find on this was circa 1850 and nobody should be surprised that the proper pronounciation was Dime.

we should just accept that and stop thinking we're in France. we're in America and speak English and I feel better now.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=S9_HURjzXMM

giorgio11

It's interesting to listen to the various weather forecasters attempting to pronounce Hurricane Henri. Maybe it should hit Paris first.

Steven59

I'm for: "Pronounce it any way you want to" - any "coin person" will know what you are talking about.

Zoins

Was a Dime ever a Disme?

ThreeCentSilverFL

Nice Half Disme.

Hydrant

The word disme is a throwback spelling used in Old English. In Old English the syllables s and f are voiceless, not pronounced. Old English is a "dead" language. Only sophisticated no nothings give this any thought. To make it more clear: How do you say, "Knight in shining armor?" ..........The word, disme, correctly pronounced is.....DIME. The S is silent.

Hydrant

By the way,....there are some hilarious Monty Python videos available on YouTube that deal indirectly with this subject. Worth watching.

BillJones

@Zoins said:
Was a Dime ever a Disme?

The was a 1792 dated pattern coin that was called a "disme." It's in the 1792 pattern section of "The Red Book."

rooksmith

I've heard them called DIS-me (like Disney) on the Pawn-Stars show.
I laughed because of course the s and the e are silent.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disme

Back in colonial days they also used what looks like a letter f to indicate an s.

So it would look like Difme in typeface..

Namvet69

Potato...pohtahtoe! Peace Roy

Coinosaurus

The word was pronounced "dime." Bob Julian demonstrated this from a contemporary poem.

The spelling "disme" possibly reflected Jefferson's status as a francophile.

Crypto

@Coinosaurus said:
The word was pronounced "dime." Bob Julian demonstrated this from a contemporary poem.

The spelling "disme" possibly reflected Jefferson's status as a francophile.

Not often I have to look up a word, well played.

coinz900

I was doing some digging through the U.S. Mint records on NNP and noticed that half-dimes and dimes were noted as dismes and half-dismes until the mid 1830s. I'll make a post sometime soon about the topic. I find it quite interesting myself.

moursund

What if a disme is dismal?

jkrk

One year I decided I wanted to own a half Dime. I bought an 1841in MS65.

My purchase price was a tad on the high side so..

I now call it....."Under water".

Coinosaurus

@coinz900 said:
I was doing some digging through the U.S. Mint records on NNP and noticed that half-dimes and dimes were noted as dismes and half-dismes until the mid 1830s. I'll make a post sometime soon about the topic. I find it quite interesting myself.

The other angle here is to look at the various Coinage Acts. At some point they changed the spelling. Depending on how you read the Coinage Acts, you might be able to make some case that coins from a certain period using "dime" and not "disme" are in fact not legal issues (it would never stand up in court, but as a strict reading of the language there may be a case here).

BryceM

If you gift me one, I'll call it Shirley if you want me to.