What's the smaller denomination of the Euro called?

Took me ages to figure out how to phrase this question.

Anyway, I googled for it and can’t find anything.

The Euro is to X as the pound is to the penny (or dollar is to cent).

What’s X?

Eurocents, or just Cents

A cent is a hundreth, think centimeters, centiliters and so on.

Thanks.

NO problems, just glad that there finally was a GQ I could nail :slight_smile:

The dollar :smiley:

The Joey.

(Completely distinctly from the coinage of “Euro” as short for “common European currency unit”, the term “Euro” is an Australian nickname, I believe derived from an Aboriginal language, for the Wallaroo.)

… or a rescognizable cognate (centesimo, sentti, etc) in the local language, except for Greece, where it’s λεπτό (sg.)/λεπτά (pl.)

I’m curious to know what you Googled. If you type “euro” into Google, the first site that comes up is Wikipedia’s page on the euro, which says that the subunit is the cent, both in the sidebar and in the main copy.

There’s also a link to a page giving the different spellings and pronunciations for euros and cents throughout the EU.

And I’ll be the nitpicker who points out that, in the context of the Euro, the plural of “cent” is “cent”.

I’ll also point out that the (American) dollar has three different named subunits: The dime, the cent, and the mill. If you take the change out of your pocket, you’ll notice that the penny is marked “One Cent”, and the nickel is marked “Five Cents” but the dime is just marked “One Dime”.

Crap - I had to slip up on my first real GQ-answer.

Honestly, I don’t remember, but it appears I massively overthought it.

In Ireland even, where they speak English?

I’ve always wondered if I could write a check in dimes, or mills, and if it would be understood and processed by my bank.

In official documents yes but in common use no (same for all countries where the plural is normally formed by adding an “s”).

Actually, the main reason a lot of Irish people say “cent” and “euro” for the plurals is that the Irish government misinterpreted EU documents, and TV and radio started using those forms. In official EU papers they use the s-less plurals, but it was never meant to dictate how people say and write the words in everyday use.

See Language and the euro - Wikipedia

If the euro is ever adopted in the UK, I’m sure we won’t use s-less plurals - other than in the vernacular, as we do with pounds on occasion: “I’ve got 10 pound in me pocket” etc…

Idiomatically, the French say “centime” regardless of what’s on the coin, but then they had a decimal currency beforehand and only the buying-power of the centime has changed (from “jack” to “very little”).

To add some trivia: in colloquial speech, in the times of DM, 10 Pfennig were called “Groschen” (an older form of currency; also the offical name for the Austrian currency). Many people now apply this to the 10 cent coin.

In Bavaria, a 2 DM coin was called “Zwickl” (this was featured in some newspapers because the heads of famous politicans were on that coin, among them Franz Josef Strauss, so when the Zwick-Scandal erupted, it fit like a T.)

Looking at the coins themselves, an American 5-cent piece is labeled “Five Cents”, while the European equivalent is labeled “5 Cent”.

I suspect that the reason is that Europe has many languages, which form plurals in different ways, and by keeping the official plural the same as the singular, they wouldn’t be favoring any of them.

So you are saying that, over there, he really IS Fi’ty Cent? <LOL>:D

And the quarter or 25-cent piece is marked “quarter dollar,” on the back below the eagle.

Yes, I think it’s more normal to hear “fifty cent” here than “fifty cents”. Before the euro it was also normal to hear “fifty pound”.