ha'p'orth

What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha'p'orth of momentary panic?

Boing Boing 2008

It has all the poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini, which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to an intolerable deal of very dry bread.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

As Storran himself expressed it, rather bitterly: "Now that I can't buy a ha'p'orth of happiness with the money, my luck has turned."

The Lamp of Fate Margaret Pedler

If it was a matter of putting away the grub, I can tell you he worked for two, but as to anything else, he made me carry his pack as well as my own, on the pretext that he had sprained his ankle, and his only contribution to the firm was a frousy old scrubbing-brush which he sneaked from a poor woman whilst I was selling her a ha'p'orth of pins.

A Girl Among the Anarchists Isabel Meredith

"He don't mane a ha'p'orth o 'harum, but jist now he's not quite in his right moind."

Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature Various

It's the Bank of England to a ha'p'orth of figs that to-morrow morning

Jonah and Co. Dornford Yates 1922

Could he not understand that if he swaggered and posed at the judicial table, or held forth at dinner on the prerogatives of Government, that he, simply to provoke her uncle, was showing thereby that he had not a ha'p'orth of respect for the Court, or himself, or any of the people who were listening and looking at him?

The Party 1917

There are still more who have written off princely debts and do not seem to be a "ha'p'orth the worse."

What is Coming? 1906

But this one thing we have done: we have clung to our patriarchal Constitution, not caring a ha'p'orth who administered our laws so long as the laws were our own.

The Little Manx Nation - 1891 Hall Caine 1892

And something out of heaven was saying to him, 'It's the Lord's day, Jannie; they'll not get a ha'p'orth.'

The Manxman A Novel - 1895 Hall Caine 1892