Two Bits and Pieces of Eight

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Nancy Nesham. I’m from Berthold, North Dakota.

Hey, Nancy.

Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. I’m glad to be at your show.

A few weeks ago, we were visiting our daughter in San Antonio.

And I don’t know what we were talking about.

My husband and she and I were talking.

And one of us said something about what my husband or I said, something about two bits.

And she said something about costing something two bits.

And she said, what are you talking about?

We said, well, two bits.

And she’s going, she had no idea what we were talking about.

And my reply was, you know, two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar, all four, whatever school you were from, you stand up and holler.

She’d never heard of this.

And so we were trying to explain, where does two bits come from?

It means 25 cents, at least that’s what we understand.

It’s a quarter.

Where does it come from?

So she’d never heard of two bits?

No, she’d never.

She’ll be 50 years old for Pete’s sake.

And she’d never heard of shave and haircut two bits?

I don’t know if she has or not.

I guess we never thought about throwing that one.

Our older daughter knows it.

I’m thinking my younger daughter probably doesn’t either, but I’m going, because I’m asking people, do you know what two bits is?

And the woman who was in the office here with us, she said she thought it was two nickels because that’s what her father would give him, two nickels to go buy candy back in the old days.

And she said she said, and I said, oh, it’s a quarter.

I’m thinking, boy, I’m really old here.

I know what two bits is.

And she got ripped off, too.

Yes, she did.

She thought it was two nickels her father was getting by really good.

Where did that come from?

We are talking about a long time ago.

We are talking about basically during colonial America, after the establishment of the U.S. Dollar, but while there were many other currencies traveling in the world that no longer exist, including the Spanish real.

And the Spanish real was this big silver coin.

When you watch pirate movies and they talk about pieces of eight, this is what they’re talking about.

It’s literally a big coin with a large number eight on it.

It’s a big silver coin.

And if you divide that into eight pieces or eight bits, one of those pieces would be worth 12 and a half cents.

So since it’s worth eight reales, one reale is worth 12 and a half cents.

So two of those is worth 25 cents.

Therefore, two bits is worth 25 cents.

Oh my gosh.

So we learned a couple things here.

We learned what a piece of eight is.

We learned what two bits is.

We learned about reals.

So what’s really interesting here, too, is eight reals being worth as much as it was was way too much money.

I mean, we’re talking about 25 cents at the time was a lot of money.

I mean, you could get a room in a boarding house and a couple of meals and maybe a little, you know, maybe your clothes washed and dried for 25 cents.

We’re talking about a fair amount of money.

So what they would do is they would cut up these pieces of eight because they were literally made of pure silver.

Very interesting.

I learned a new thing.

We always just, two bits was $0.25.

Yeah.

Sure.

And that kind of sucks.

I don’t know where the background comes from.

Right.

Shave and haircut, right?

Yes, that’s it.

Yes, shave and haircut.

You don’t get that for two bits anymore either.

No, you sure don’t.

You got to know somebody.

Yeah, that’s about it.

All right. Thank you, Nancy. Take care now.

Well, thank you very much.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.