FIPPENNY BIT

Fip″pen‐ny bit′ (? or ?). [[Corruption of five penny bit.]] The Spanish half real, or one sixteenth of a dollar, — so called in Pennsylvania and the adjacent States. ☞ Before the act of Congress, Feb. 21, 1857, caused the adoption of decimal coins and the withdrawal of foreign coinage from circulation, this coin passed currently for 6¼ cents, and was called in New England a fourpence ha'penny or fourpence; in New York a sixpence; in Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc., a fip; and in Louisiana, a picayune.