grandtanteJE65
Grannynannywanny
Pound doesn’t bother me. But I have heard one pence mentioned on several occasions and that does grate.
When decimal coinage was brought in, a lot of people who cared for the English language complained about "1 pence" and "a one pence piece, or coin" as we said, quite rightly, that "pence" could be understood as the plural of "penny", or as a collective noun, which obviously was referring to more than a single penny.
At the time, we were told that calling the new coinage's smallest unit "1 penny" would tend to confuse people.
Why this view was held I never understood, but by now it is far too late to do anything about this usage.
It did say '1 new penny' and '2 new pence' on the coins