bit / two bits

Two bits, in American speech, literally means twenty-five cents, but it is also used more generally to refer to a small valuation or as an adjective meaning cheap or insignificant. How it came to mean these things is wrapped up in the history of money in North America.

Bit itself comes from the Old English bita, literally meaning a morsel of food, a bite, but in pre-Conquest England it could also be used more generally to mean a fragment or portion of something.

In the sixteenth century, bit started to be used in underworld slang as a noun meaning money. We see this usage in the 1555 book A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable Vse of Diceplay:

And whensoeuer ye take vp a cosin, be suer as nere as ye can to knowe a forehand what store of byt he hath in his buy, that is what mony he hath in his purse, & whether it bee in great cogs or in small, that is gold or siluer, and at what game he wil sonest stoupe that we may fede him w^t his owne humor & haue coules redy for him.

And by the seventeenth century a more specific sense of bit had developed, that of a Spanish real, or one eighth of a peso. The Spanish peso (Spanish dollar) was the most common coin in circulation in colonial North America. The reals were also known as pieces of eight. We see this phrase in Edmund Scott’s 1606 An Exact Discourse of the Subtilties, Fashishions, Pollicies, Religion, and Ceremonies of the East Indians, in which Scott gives a rather racist account of the greediness of Chinese people:

I profered them a peece of eight a man, which they much scorned, I asked them if it were not enough for halfe an houres worke: they aunswered againe, that if they had not helped vs, we had had our house burnt, and so had lost all.

And we see bit being used to refer to a Spanish real in the minutes of a 1683 inquiry into a counterfeiting ring in Philadelphia:

The Gov^r telleth Ch: Pickering & Sam^ll Buckley of their abuse to y^e Governm^t, in Quining of Spanish Bitts and Boston money, to the Great Damage and abuse to y^e Subjects thereof. The Gov^r asked them whether or no they are Guilty of y^e fact. They confess they have put of some of those new bitts, but they say that all their money was as good Silver as any Spanish money, and also deny that they had any hand in this matter. Charles Pickering saith he will Stand by it and be Tried; he declareth that he heard Jno. Rush Swere that he Spent halfe his time in making of Bitts.

The Gov^r asketh Sam^ll Buckley whether he did not help to melt money, or to put in y^e Copper allay into y^e Silver more than Should be, and to have been at y^e Stamping of new Bitts, and Strikeing on the Stamp.

And after the American Revolution, the Spanish coins continued to be widely used. (Spanish coinage would remain legal tender in the United States until 1857.) A June 1792 resolution of a group of Philadelphia merchants on the value of various forms of foreign currency uses the phrase two bits to refer to a quarter dollar:

It was Resolved,

That they will reject the said German Coin in all Payments that shall be rendered to them.—

The following Resolutions were also proposed and agreed to:—

That Johannesses weighing under Eight pennyweights will be rejected in all payments and not be received at more than they weigh; that all other Gold will be received by weight as heretofore, except only the pieces which have always passed at Fourteen Shillings.

That they will receive in payments the new pieces called Quarter Dollars, which pass at the value of Pistreens in Madeira, at 19 1–2d or two bits and a dog, ant the bitt pieces of the same stamp at 10 1-2d or one bitt and a dog.

(A pistreen was a Spanish silver coin. A dog is a coin of low value, particularly a copper coin issued in the West Indies.)

This would be the state of affairs until the turn of the twentieth century, when two bits began to be used as an adjective meaning cheap, of little value. Here is an example from Montana, in the 29 November 1900 edition of the Butte Weekly Miner:

Since the recent overwhelming defeat of everything that goes by the name of republicanism in the state of Montana, every two-bit republican newspaper in the state is busily engaged in hatching plans for the successful reorganization of the national democracy. How kind and thoughtful you are, gentlemen! However, you better attend your own funeral. The great national democratic party is perfectly capable of attending to their own business.

And this from the Idaho Daily Statesman of 26 January 1901:

One of the very gratifying features of political developments is that there is no organized opposition to the navy. While we have two-bit politicians seeking to arouse apprehension that the army will be used to subvert our liberties, there is no such cry respecting the naval arms of the service.

So that’s it, how bit made the journey from a morsel of food to a description of low-rent politicians.

Sources:

“Attitude Toward the Navy.” Idaho Daily Statesman (Boise), 26 January 1901, 2/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. bit, n.1; two-bit, adj., two-bits, n.

A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable Vse of Diceplay. London: Abraham Vele, 1555, sig. C.iii.r–v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Minutes of 24 August 1683 Meeting. Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. 1 of 13. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Jo. Severns, 1852, 185. HathiTrust Digital Archive. (Reprint of an 1831 edition).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, July 2023, s.v. bit, n.2 & adj.2; March 2006, s.v. piece, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. two-bit, adj.

“Philadelphia, 7th June, 1792.” Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1792, 3/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Scott, Edmund. An Exact Discourse of the Subtilties, Fashishions, Pollicies, Religion, and Ceremonies of the East Indians as Well Chyneses as Iauans, there Abyding and Dweling. London: W. White for Walter Burre, 1606, sig. E3.v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

“Will Look After Itself.” Butte Weekly Miner (Montana), 29 November 1900, 4/7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Tina Shaw, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. Flickr.com. Public domain image.