Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A piece of paper money issued privately and devalued by inadequate security or by inflation.
- noun A piece of paper money of small denomination issued by the government, especially one issued by the US government from 1862 to 1878.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small square patch of brown paper, usually saturated with vinegar, tar, tobacco-juice, or the like, applied by poor people to sores on the leg.
- noun Hence, humorously
- noun A small paper note used as money; a printed promise to pay a small sum issued as money without legal security.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun United States Formerly, a jocose term for a bank note greatly depreciated in value; also, for paper money of a denomination less than a dollar.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun paper money of little value issued on insufficient security
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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By reason of this traffic more or less currency of the "shinplaster" kind was in circulation, besides some of the prisoners had money concealed on their persons when captured or had friends on the outside who managed to give them some.
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The war had by this time produced two comparatively new industries. One was the issuing of "shinplaster" currency, and the other was the manufacture of fruit brandy.
The end of an era, 1899
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So before you start hoarding your one-cent pieces, consider the plight of the last piece of widely used currency to be retired, the "shinplaster," a 25-cent note introduced in 1870 to help overcome a temporary shortage in silver coins.
Thestar.com - Home Page Kenneth Kidd 2010
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So before you start hoarding your one-cent pieces, consider the plight of the last piece of widely used currency to be retired, the "shinplaster," a 25-cent note introduced in 1870 to help overcome a temporary shortage in silver coins.
Thestar.com - Home Page Kenneth Kidd 2010
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And the problem had nothing to do with any of the myriad of shinplaster grotesqueries we have come to expect from the Department of Homeland Security.
Thomas Lipscomb: The Trouser Bomber Effect: Watching Government Cure Incompetence with Idiocy 2009
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Marse Adam pull out a big flat black pocket-book and gived me a shinplaster, and say: 'Jesse, ever time your basket h'ist de beam of de steelyards to 100, you gits a shinplaster.'
Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves South Carolina Narratives, Part 4 Work Projects Administration
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Today the postage stamp province has become the shinplaster province, almost dollar bill in her new size.
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It's healthy and it's moral, and it's goin 'to make Omyha look like a shinplaster.
Desert Dust J. Clinton Shepherd 1911
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Here is the hard face of Big Business scowling at its desk; and here the glittering Heroine of the hour in her dress of shimmering sequins, making such tepid creatures as Madeline and Kate look like the small change out of a twenty-five cent shinplaster.
The Hohenzollerns in America Stephen Leacock 1906
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A New York paper states that a Brooklyn lady purchased an article in Fulton-street the other day, when she received the following as change for a one-dollar bill: — Ferry tickets, shinplaster, counterfeit penny, car ticket, milk ticket, butcher's IOU, grocer's IOU, bread ticket, three cent postage-stamp, one cent postage-stamp, and ice-cream ticket.
A New York Paper 1862
bilby commented on the word shinplaster
Mmm, money!
July 23, 2008