Seems like I get them wrong about half the time when I spell them. And what if there was a Nichol’s Nickel Nickle company, what would they make?
n/m didn’t notice the forum.
Is there another meaning of nickle, besides being a variant (or incorrect, if you’re prescriptive) spelling of nickel?
You appear to be under the impression that the mineral and the coin are spelled differently. They are spelled the same: nickel. “Nickle” is a variant spelling, I would guess usually for the coin.
Apparently I was under that impression. Sheesh. Wonder why I thought that? Well at least I made it to 74 before publicly demonstrating I’m an idiot. (Oh, fer chissakes don’t anyone search my earlier posts).
That’s what I learned as a kid.
I’m 62. I’ve never seen “nickle” written before this thread. Might be a regionalism.
I wouldn’t call it a regionalism, just a misspelling.
The OED has an entry for nickle:
English regional (north midlands). A woodpecker; (perhaps) spec. the green woodpecker, Picus viridis.
The etymologies of nickel and nickle are different. The OED says that the word for the metal comes from Swedish, since it was first isolated by a Swedish chemist in the mid-18th century. Meanwhile, the bird name descends from the Middle English word for the bird, from at least the 15th century.
Of course, I would bet one shiny quarter that most instances of “nickel” online are misspellings, and are not referring to handsome/terrifying birds.
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Nickle is a programming language and a common misspelling of nickel.
Yeah, in my experience, it’s a prertty common misspelling. Understandable, because most similar words are spelled with “le” (pickle, tickle, etc.), but still wrong.
Stupid trivia question: Why does the back of a dime say “ONE DIME” but the back of a nickel say “FIVE CENTS” and not “ONE NICKEL”?
Is it because “dime” already means “ten cents” (or one tenth of a dollar), while “nickel” doesn’t refer to a particular value?
Exactly See 31 U.S. Code § 5101. “United States money is expressed in dollars, dimes or tenths, cents or hundreths [sic], and mills or thousandths. A dime is a tenth of a dollar, a cent is a hundredth of a dollar, and a mill is a thousandth of a dollar.”
In fact, the first nickels in the United States were three cent-nickels first issued in 1865. The five-cent nickel was not issued until 1866.
They tried issuing silver 3-cent coins, and they were so tiny, people hated them. But there was a demand for a 3-cent coin, because first class postage was 3 cents.
And BTW, for years, 5 cent pieces were also silver. They didn’t say FIVE CENTS either-- they said HALF DIME.
Originally (1792) they said HALF DISME
Well, at least one instance.