Here in the UK our currency is pounds and pence, we don’t call our pennies cents.
USA currency is dollars and cents so why do you call your cents pennies 
I thought the Americans did call their cents pennies sometimes? (The song, Pennies From Heaven,k etc).
Yes they do and I’m asking why 
It’s a colloquialism from dating from at least 1889, apparently. Which only postdates the existence of the unit in America by a hundred years or so.
My WAG would be that ‘penny’ describes the physical properties of the actual coin - i.e. a circular piece of copper, whereas ‘cent’ describes one hundredth of a dollar - a notional unit of currency.
These are two slightly different things - it just happens that we use the same term (‘penny’) for both of them in England.
Thanks. I often wondered about this
Borrowed from you Brits – a “penny” is, after all, a very common referent for a small item of currency, in everything from Bible to proverbs to popular song. Both are, in the modern era, small copper-alloy coins. So “penny” became slang for “one-cent piece.”
In the singular, yes, though we do differentiate when it comes to larger sums: twenty pence is not necessarily twenty pennies.
OK that’s pennies sorted.
Now then why do you call your 5c and 10c coins nickels and dimes (or is it the other way around?)
I mean our coinage, since decimalisation in 1971, has no slang? for it.
10p is ten pence, 20p is twenty and so on.
Pre 1971 6d was a tanner, 1/0d was a bob, 5/0d was half a dollar, £1 was a quid
£1 still is a quid. And 2/6d was half a crown, though I don’t suppose that counts as slang since the coin actually had “HALF CROWN” on it.
Well, heck. A ‘nickel’ was originally made of, well, nickel.
And I’m pretty sure ‘dime’ has some latin root in ‘tenth’ or somesuch.
D’oh! :smack:
Sorry, chowder, I misread your question. Normal service will now be resumed.
Yes it did, I just 'membered.
What was a silver threepenny bit called?
‘Nickel’ comes from the metal used to make the coins at one stage, and ‘dime’ is an official name (like half crown), meaning ‘tenth’.
A Mack.
A little mac as opposed to a big 'un 
I think, having trawled through my grey matter, it was called a “Joey” or a “Jimmy” or summat
Given time, I’m sure it will.
Besides, it does have slang; a pound coin is commonly called a ‘nug’ or ‘nugget’ (as distinct from ‘quid’, which refers to the monetary unit). Can’t think of any more examples, but I bet they’re out there somewhere.
A “Joey”. But it was only the silver ones that were called that. The 12-sided brass ones didn’t have a name that I recall.
A penny is one percent of a dollar!
Hence one cent or cent for short.
Bwuh?
‘Cent’ is not short for ‘percent’.