-worth
English
Etymology
From worth.
Suffix
-worth
- Denotes a quantity corresponding to the time, value or dimension of the suffixed term.
- 1941, Betty Swallow, private correspondance, quoted in 2009, Dear Helen: Wartime Letters from a Londoner to Her American Pen Pal, University of Missouri Press (→ISBN), page 177
- Well! he's doing well, now, partaking of a little boiled chicken, and an egg or so, while the average Britisher has a hell of a job to get a shillingworth of meat a week and has to queue up for hours for eggs.
- 1951, Henry Sturmey, H. Walter Staner, The Autocar: A Journal Published in the Interests of the Mechanically Propelled Road Carriage, page 104:
- [S]he alone, to the best of my knowledge, has ridden far and fast in all weathers in the passenger seat, which is not a seat at all but the aforesaid oil tank, all 3½-gallonsworth.
- 2005, Peter Finch, Grahame Davies, The Big Book of Cardiff: New Writing from Europe's Youngest Capital, Poetry Wales Press:
- I sway in my uncertainty; should I drain this and go? or seek another pintsworth of that impenetrable mystery?
- 1941, Betty Swallow, private correspondance, quoted in 2009, Dear Helen: Wartime Letters from a Londoner to Her American Pen Pal, University of Missouri Press (→ISBN), page 177
Usage notes
Usually suffixes to the genitive form of nouns, which means that there is a connecting -s- infix between the noun and the suffix (bottlesworth, yearsworth). Monetary amounts such as pennyworth seem to be an exception to this.
Derived terms
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