guinea

From Guinea, the early modern name for West Africa, the coins originally being made of gold from the region, mostly from the 'Gold Coast' (modern Ghana) and used for African trade, and the guinea fowl being found there.

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “the slur”)

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɪni/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪni

guinea (plural guineas)

1. (British, historical) A gold coin originally worth twenty shillings; later (from 1717 until the adoption of decimal currency) standardised at a value of twenty-one shillings.
   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck—nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection...

   • 1962 June, “New Reading on Railways: Locomotives of British Railways, by H. C. Casserley & L. Asher, Spring Books, 21s.”, in Modern Railways, page 432:

     However, since there are 488 pages in all for a bargain price of a guinea one must not be too carping.

2. Synonym of guinea fowl
   • 1944, Emily Carr, “Brooding and Homing”, in The House of All Sorts‎:

     The guineas peeped complainingly, the goslings waddled into all the puddles and came back to chill my skin.

3. (US, slang, derogatory, ethnic slur) A person of Italian descent.
   • 1982, Stephen King, Survivor Type:

     If I’m to tell the whole truth—and why not? I sure have the time!—I’ll have to start by saying I was born Richard Pinzetti, in New York’s Little Italy. My father was an Old World guinea.

• (person of Italian descent): dago, Eyetie, goombah, greaseball, guido, wog, wop

• → Arabic: جُنَيْه (junayh)
• → Egyptian Arabic: جنيه (ginēh)
• → Irish: gine
• → Scottish Gaelic: gini
• → Spanish: guinea
• → Welsh: gini

• “guinea”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

From English guinea.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡineɑ/, [ˈɡine̞ɑ̝]

guinea

1. guinea (British gold coin)

• IPA^(key): /ɡiˈnea/ [ɡiˈne.a]
• Rhymes: -ea
• Syllabification: gui‧ne‧a

Borrowed from English guinea.

guinea f (plural guineas)

1. guinea (British gold coin)

See guineo.

guinea f (plural guineas)

1. female equivalent of guineo

guinea

1. feminine singular of guineo

• “guinea”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014