Gopal from Greenville, North Carolina, wonders why we use the phrase my two cents after expressing an opinion to indicate that we’re open to discussion about it. Since the 16th century, the term twopence has been used to mean a “paltry, trifling amount.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “My Two Cents”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Gopal. I am calling from Greenville, North Carolina.
Hello, Gopal. Welcome to the show. How can we help?
Thank you.
Yeah, I was always wondering about the phrase, my two cents.
So whenever in office communications, usually people put it at the end after saying their opinion or some idea, they put at the end that, okay, this is my two cents.
I was wondering as to what is the origin of that phrase, or more importantly, why don’t they call it as my one cent if it is representing a small idea?
Right. Why do they say my two cents?
Well, that’s a really good question, and it’s a really useful phrase, isn’t it?
Because it sort of colors what has come before, right?
It’s a kind of almost a humble or a modest little addition to it.
It softens what you’ve just said, correct?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, I understand the usage part of it.
Sometimes it doesn’t do us any good to look at English too closely and parse phrases too carefully.
But the term two-pence, tuppence, has been around since at least the 16th century to mean of very little value or paltry or worthless.
Sometimes English just isn’t logical.
You can see examples of this back to the 19th century at least.
And I know that linguists have come up with a couple of examples from Philadelphia where people were using that expression and using it in quotation marks.
Here’s my two cents. You know, sometimes it just doesn’t pay, so to speak, to parse English too closely.
I want to spin this around, though, and talk about something you said early in the call, which I think deserves some attention, which is we often tack on, well, that’s my two cents at the end of an opinion.
And the reason we do this is to let people know that we’re open to discussion and that we’re willing to, we’re kind of hedging our statement.
We’re letting them know that we mean what we say, but we’re also willing to soften our opinion a little bit.
It’s a way of reaching out to the other person, let them know that we’re maybe willing to negotiate or willing to accept other points of view, and that it’s a way of showing a little bit of kindness.
Does that make sense?
Okay, so we are saying that we are not fixated on our idea, but we are open to other suggestions, and this is just my suggestion.
It’s a really important thing to do when you’re working with other people, right, to make sure that they know that you’re thinking about them as much as you’re thinking about yourself.
Okay, that’s good. Yeah.
I hope we’ve done a little untangling here for you.
Yeah, yeah. I guess primarily one shouldn’t approach it too much, like, logically or mathematically.
So language doesn’t work that way.
Okay.
Language isn’t logical and pigs don’t sing opera.
Okay. Okay, I got it. Thank you.
Take care.
Bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
So that’s our tuppence worth.
That’s how they say it in Britain.
You know, that’s just my tuppence worth.
You can believe whatever you want.
And this is different than penny for your thoughts.
These are completely independently derived idioms.
But the idea of a penny for your thoughts is that a penny used to have a lot of value.
A penny was a big sum of money.
Right?
A penny was like offering somebody, you know, a $20 bill.
And it was meaningful.
Yeah.
But no, it’s not.
That $64,000 question used to be much more valuable.
Right.
You could buy a house, and now maybe that’s a down payment.
Right.
If that.
