ten-cent word

Sense 1 is part of the broader family of expressions that includes ten-dollar word and five-dollar word, which are straightforwardly derived by associating monetary value with sophistication. Sense 1 and the other synonym twenty-five cent word may have been derived in the same way and would be holdovers of times when cents had more purchasing power and could be considered expensive.

An alternative story circulates that claims that sense 1 comes from days past when copywriters were paid by the letter. Similar stories are often employed to explain the silent letters of French, Dutch, and English orthography, as well as the length of the works of writers like Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas. The claimed relationship between these phenomena is difficult to find primary sources for and is outright invalid in at least the cases of Dickens and French, lending the story an apocryphal air on the whole and leaving its applicability to sense 1 uncertain. It remains possible that the references to cents in sense 1 and in twenty-five cent word carry some influence from realistic costs that were formerly attached to writing, but the claim's overall track record nonetheless casts doubt.

Sense 2 was derived as an antonym of the more-expensive terms in the above family.