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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

dime.

A coin worth one-tenth of a dollar, that is, ten cents.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/daɪm/
  1. A coin worth one-tenth of a dollar, that is, ten cents.

    Canada · US
  2. A small amount of money.

    Canada · US
    She didn't spend a dime.
  3. An assist.

    Philippines · US
  4. A playing card with the rank of ten.

    slang
  5. Ten dollars.

    slang
  6. A thousand dollars.

    slang
  7. A measure of illicit drugs (usually marijuana) sold in ten-dollar bags.

    slang
  8. A ten-year prison sentence.

    slang
  9. Payment responsibility.

    slang
    Are you traveling on the company's dime?
  10. A beautiful woman (10 on a 10-point scale).

    US · slang
  11. A defensive formation with six defensive backs, one of whom is a dimeback.

  12. A particularly long or precise throw that ends with a catch.

    Canadian
Where this word comes from

From Middle English dime, from Anglo-Norman disme (“one tenth, tithe”) (modern French dîme), from Medieval Latin decima, from Latin decima (pars) (“tenth (part)”). Doublet of decim, decima, and decime.

verb/daɪm/
  1. To inform on, to turn in to the authorities, to rat on, especially anonymously.

    US · slang
    Somebody dimed on me and I got arrested for selling marijuana.
  2. To operate an audio amplifier (especially an electric guitar amplifier) at level "10" (typically the highest amplification level).

    US · slang
    I get the best-sounding sustain and smooth harmonic distortion when I run the amp dimed.
Where this word comes from

From the use of the coin in a payphone to report a crime to the police. US payphones charged 10¢ in almost all jurisdictions until the late 1970s.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.