picaillon
picaillon
French (Provençal)
“A tiny copper coin from Piedmont traveled to Louisiana and became the English word for anything not worth your time.”
The picaillon was a small copper coin minted in Savoy and Piedmont from the late 16th century onward—worth half a Savoyard denier, which is to say, worth almost nothing. The name likely derives from Provençal pica, 'to clink,' imitating the thin sound of a worthless coin hitting a counter.
French colonists brought the word to Louisiana in the 1700s. In New Orleans, a picayune was the local name for the Spanish half-real coin—the smallest denomination in circulation, worth about six and a quarter cents. The Daily Picayune newspaper, founded in 1837 (now the Times-Picayune), took its name from the coin that was its price per copy.
From the coin, the adjective spread. By the mid-1800s, picayune meant 'trivial' or 'petty' across American English. Mark Twain used it. The word migrated north from New Orleans with the same contempt it had always carried: this thing is not worth a picayune, not worth the smallest coin you can hold.
The coin vanished. Spanish currency left American circulation after the Civil War. But the adjective stayed, detached from any physical object, meaning simply: beneath serious consideration.
Related Words
Today
Picayune is the literary person's word for trivial. It has a sharpness that 'petty' and 'minor' lack—a specificity rooted in the clink of a nearly worthless coin on a New Orleans counter. To call something picayune is to dismiss it with precision.
The Times-Picayune still publishes. The coin is long gone. But the word's lesson endures: the smallest denomination in any system eventually lends its name to everything beneath notice.
Explore more words