twopenny, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

twopenny adj.

also tuppeny

[the value; Williams notes a twopenny whore as the cheapest 17C prostitute]

virtually worthless, insignificant, paltry.

1723		C. Walker Authentick Memoirs of Sally Salisbury 97: That proud Minx you seem to have such a Liking to [...] is little better by Extraction, than any of our Two Penny Thrums.
1793		J. O’Keeffe London Hermit (1794) 8: You damn’d twopenny poney-race.
1852		Thackeray Henry Esmond (1898) 372: I abdicate the twopenny crown.
1876		J. Greenwood Low-Life Deeps 268: They are but a poor twopenny lot of robbers.
1884		W.C. Russell Jack’s Courtship I 161: Old Hawke was a prig and a two-penny squatter.
1905		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Aug. 36/1: The band isn’t playing when the bullet gets him; and the bullet knocks the pose away, and leaves him a clawing mass of twopenny yells. There’s one lone and sorrowful thing about a dead man; you can’t offer him any of your breakfast.
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Longevity Jujubes’ Sporting Times 23 July 1/3: A reply re Longevity Jujubes / From the man with the twopenny ‘whiff.’.
1911		E. Dyson ‘The Rivals’ in Benno and Some of the Push 160: Look-in’ like the cockie talker from a tuppeny push.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 28: Not one of those cheap sports flying around in twopenny cars.
1937		P. Morris [trans.] Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest 22: [O]ur poor dear old-fashioned scribblers, with their tuppenny Lives of the Saints.
1999		Observer Screen 15 Aug. 3: Winston Churchill famously dismissed ITV as ‘that tuppeny Punch and Judy show.’.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

twopenny burster (n.) [its price and its effect on the stomach]

a loaf of bread.

1821

W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry n.p.: I say, do you hear, let’s have a two-penny burster (loaf), half a quartern o’ bees vax, a ha’porth o’ ingens, and a dollop o’ salt along vith it, vill you?

twopenny damn (n.)

see damn n.

twopenny fuck (n.)

something considered completely worthless, usu. as not give/worth a...

1963		J. Brooks Henry’s War 166: ‘I'm so old with worry and fear I don't give a twopenny fuck what happens to me’.
1989		J. Malcolm Fortunes 247: ‘Do you want me to hate you?’ ‘I don’t give a twopenny fuck, my dear!’.
1994		B. MacLaverty Walking the Dog 58: ‘Education nowadays isn’t worth a tup-ney fuck’ .
1996		(con. 1964-65) B. Thorpe Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll 154: [He] didn’t give a twopenny fuck what anybody thought.
2003		B. James Between Lives 217: ‘Does she give a twopenny fuck about us? [...] Does she worry about this foundering campaign’ .
2011		A. Dryden Blind Spy [ebook] ‘I don’t think the socalled terror ship is worth a twopenny fuck’.

twopenny hop (n.) [the 2d. price of admission + hop n.¹ (1): ‘the clog hornpipe, the pipe dance, flash jigs, and horn pipes in fetters, à la Jack Sheppard, are the favourite movements’ (Hotten 1867)]

cheap dancehalls and the dances held at them.

1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 34/2: The bunts is for the most part the gambling money, as well as the money for the ‘penny gaff,’ the ‘twopenny hop,’ the tobacco, and the pudding money of the boys.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 188: A twopenny hop like that, and you’d think it was a slap-up ball at the Trocadero or something, the way he lapped it up.

twopenny rope (n.) [orig. two ropes strung across a room, with rough bedding (usu. sacking) strung between them, on which bedless tramps could lean and fitfully sleep for a 2d. payment; note Dickens Pickwick Papers (1836–7): ‘’Ven the lady and gen’lm’n as keeps the Hot-el, first begun business, they used to make the beds on the floor; but this wouldn’t do at no price, ’cos instead o’ taking a moderate twopenn’orth o’ sleep, the lodgers used to lie there half the day. So now they has two ropes, ’bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the room; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, stretched across em.’]

(UK tramp) a hostel, a casual ward.

1836–7		Dickens Pickwick Papers (1999) 213: The twopenny rope, Sir [...] is just a cheap lodging house, vere the beds is twopence a night.
1859		G.A. Sala Gaslight and Daylight 4: I have heard, too, of tramps’ lodging-houses, and of the ‘twopenny rope.’.
1874		H. Mayhew London Characters 349: I had seen the wretched herd of mudlarks, sewer-hunters, rag-pickers [...] huddled together of a night at a ‘twopenny rope.’.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 407: The ‘two-penny rope’ was a recognised institution amongst the more economically inclined.
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Bedrooms’ Sporting Times 15 Oct. 2/3: My own little show, / Though it’s far from a ‘twopenny rope,’ / Is too small an apartment.

twopenny tube (n.) [the original fare of 2d. + tube n.¹ (5)]

the London Underground.

1900		Sunderland Dly Echo 28 Dec. 6/2: A sight breakdown occurred on the Central London Railway (the Twopenny Tubs) this morning.
1900		Daily Tel. 13 Oct. in Ware (1909) 253/1: We have already, it is true the omnibus, the hansom, the four-wheeler, the tramcar, the underground railway, and the ‘two-penny tube.’.
1903		Manchester Eve. News 28 Sept. 4/6: Suicide on the Twopenny Tube.
1905		Sporting Times 27 May 1/5: Ye don’t mean to say as the railway-tunnels is lower than the Tuppenny Toob?
1931		A. Bennett Teresa of Watling Street 179: ‘What ho!’ exclaimed the driver [...] ‘Kilburn, eh? What’s the matter with the Tuppenny Toob?’.

twopenny upright(er) (n.)

see threepenny upright under threepenny adj.