Meaning
Used to say that something is completely worthless, or that someone has or will pay not even the smallest amount of money. The red cent is the American copper one-cent coin, for decades the lowest-value US coin, so the phrase marks the very bottom of the scale of value. Informal and American; almost always negative - not worth, not one, never paid a. It reads oddly in affirmative statements, being a negative-polarity expression. Regional use: American English.
Origin
American. The United States began striking large copper cents in 1793, and their reddish metal soon earned the nickname red cent, recorded by 1839 per Stuart Berg Flexner's Listening to America, cited by the Phrase Finder; by 1849 the coin was being called simply a red. The copper cent was discontinued in 1857, but the idiom survived. It followed earlier American depreciations such as not worth a copper (1788) and not worth a cent (1820s). An 1867 play by Augustin Daly shows the shortened form in use - hasn't got a red - and the expression almost always appears in negative constructions, so lexicographers class it as a negative-polarity item.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- haven't got a red
- not one red cent
- without a red cent
Usage Examples
- That old sedan has a rusted frame, a dead battery, and four flat tires, so it is not worth a red cent at this point.
- The contractors walked off the job before finishing the roof, and they will not see one red cent of the final payment.
- After the lawsuit and the repairs, I did not have a red cent left over for the vacation I had been planning all year.