Why was the dime called a disme in the old days?

Bear

I don't know, that's why I'm asking you.

CoinJunkie

From merriam-webster.com:

* Main Entry: disme
* Pronunciation: ˈdīm
* Function: noun
* Etymology: obsolete English, tenth, from obsolete French, from Old French disme, dime — more at dime
* Date: 1792

: a United States 10-cent coin struck in 1792

adamlaneus

Modern French for ten is "dix".

Tenth is "dixième".

Add to that lots of beer, lots of time, enough to corrupt the language. I guess I can see it.

CoinJunkie

OK, it's been a long time since I took any French, but I think "dixieme" means tenth in the sense of
"I'm on my tenth beer" as opposed to a fraction. Perhaps, it means both.

MidLifeCrisis

Why was the dime called a disme in the old days?

Because no one could spell back then.

adamlaneus

CoinJunkie is correct. I quoted the non-fractional use of "tenth".

I took French in high school. The knowledge is mostly gone, as I never used it,

MidLifeCrisis

OK, seriously...

"The need for a rational system for United States coinage received the early attention of Congress. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton all strongly favored adoption of the decimal system. They argued that the decimal system represented a clean break with the past and was the most scientific way to reconcile the differences of the Spanish and English monetary systems. The decimal system was invented by Simon Stevin van Brugghe (1548-1620) and first published in a pamphlet, Be Thiende, in 1585. The French translation was entitled La Disme. Robert Norton's 1608 translation: Disme: The art of tenths, or, Decimal arithmetic introduced the idea to England. It was from these European roots that the concept of tenths, or "La Disme"anglicized later to "dime"immigrated to America."

This website has more information.

ProofArtworkonCircs

<<Because no one could spell back then.>>

As President Andrew Jackson was supposed to have said "Mighty ignorant man knows only one way to spell a word".

MidLifeCrisis

<< <i><<Because no one could spell back then.>>

As President Andrew Jackson was supposed to have said "Mighty ignorant man knows only one way to spell a word". >>


Touché

adamlaneus

Read the original journals of Lewis and Clark. The original one where just about every sentence is a struggle to understand.

Standardization of punctuation and spelling of the English language came relatively late in history.

BAJJERFAN

Today it would be called a diss me.

Gemini

diss me and I'll diss you back you fool.

keets

this is a topic that should be linked or locked so we can be done with it and all the inevitable discussion that goes along with it.

seriously, anyone who has spent their life in America should understand or realize that any word taken from a foreign language and placed in regular use gets pronounced the way we want to pronounce it, that's just the American way. such is the case with disme which may have been pronounced one way in French where it originated and another here. it simply took awhile for the spelling to catch up with the pronounciation.

MidLifeCrisis

<< <i>this is a topic that should be linked or locked so we can be done with it and all the inevitable discussion that goes along with it. >>


I disagree.

I think it can be very interesting to learn about the evolution of language and the roots of words we now use...and the history surrounding the creation and implementation of our early coinage. If this thread results in such discussion, I'm all for it.

Sunnywood

It is an old form of the fraction one-tenth. In French, dixième means the ordinal tenth as in "tenth in line," but "un dixième" means the fraction one-tenth. "Disme" is simply an old English cognate of dixième. "Disme" was also used to refer to a tithe, or one-tenth (10%) mandatory contribution, i.e. tax, levied by the church; so it meant a tenth part generally, not just in the context of currency.

PerryHall

No spell check back then.