Originally Posted by
jib71
Thanks for confirming. I thought I was the idiot ... Now I'll stop looking.
Strictly speaking, its value is what the coin says: one dime. The original US dollar was subdivided into ten
dīmes which were further subdivided into ten cents each. One cent was further subdivided into ten milles.
Students of French will recognize
dīme as a short form of
dīxičme, "one tenth". It's hardly President Washington's fault that we only remember "dime" as the name of a coin, is it?