Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An English silver coin worth four pence, used from the 14th to the 17th century.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An English silver coin, of the value of fourpence, first issued for circulation in the reign of Edward III.
  • noun One of various small continental coins.
  • noun Proverbially, a very small sum.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An old English silver coin, equal to four pence.
  • noun Any small sum of money.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun hulled grain
  • noun archaic Any of various old coins of England and Scotland.
  • noun An historic English silver coin worth four English pennies, still minted as one of the set of Maundy coins.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a former English silver coin worth four pennies

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English grot, from Middle Dutch groot, a thick, large coin, translation of Medieval Latin (dēnārius) grossus, thick (denarius).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English grotes (pl.), from Old English grotan, plural of grot, from Proto-Germanic *grutan. More at grit.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly from Middle Dutch groot, the Old French gros Tournois ("a coin of Tours"), from Medieval Latin denarius ("coin") grossus ("large"). Related to German Groschen

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Examples

Comments

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  • I hear that for a groat, you can get a groatsworth of anything.

    December 10, 2006

  • See also shovegroat.

    June 17, 2020