Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small silver coin used in America and the West Indies during the 1700s.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In the West Indies, the peseta.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An old Spanish silver coin of the value of about twenty cents.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A Spanish silver
coin worth tworeals , used as common currency in the Americas in the 18th century.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pistareen.
Examples
-
A pistareen was a Spanish coin worth about seventeen cents.
Diary of Anna Green Winslow A Boston School Girl of 1771 Anna Green Winslow 1881
-
Mr. Emerson becomes equally flippant and irreverent when he speaks of a "pistareen Providence."
Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays Timothy Titcomb
-
So, if I may not believe in a "pistareen Providence," I must make
Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays Timothy Titcomb
-
A pistareen, you know, was 18 3/4 cents -- that is a sevenpence and a thrip.
-
A man could afflict another with a pistareen letter that wasent worth five cents.
-
Many were so worn that a pistareen would bring only a Yankee shilling, sixteen and two-thirds cents; the half-pistareen, only eight cents; the real, ten; the half-real, five.
History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) Elisha Benjamin Andrews 1880
-
The high Germans above us, like that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for the King?
In the Valley Harold Frederic 1877
-
And, now and then, an amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which, whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar.
-
But every time I ask him to change a pistareen, or give me two fo'pencehappennies for a ninepence, or help me to make out two and thrippence (mark the old Master's archaisms about the currency), what does the fellow do but put his hand in his pocket and pull out an old Roman coin; I have no change, says he, but this assarion of Diocletian.
Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851
-
But every time I ask him to change a pistareen, or give me two fo'pencehappennies for a ninepence, or help me to make out two and thrippence (mark the old Master's archaisms about the currency), what does the fellow do but put his hand in his pocket and pull out an old Roman coin; I have no change, says he, but this assarion of Diocletian.
The Poet at the Breakfast-Table Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851
yarb commented on the word pistareen
"...the British pound, alas, goes spiralling down to emerge as a pistareen. You don't know what a pistareen is, Jacqueline? You know what it sounds like, but not what it is. It is a debased coin, and as such the best symbol of the age in which we live, all of us together in the soup, under the soupistareen."
- Malcolm Lowry, October Ferry to Gabriola
July 30, 2008
madmouth commented on the word pistareen
hee hee
October 28, 2009