Liliputin- 5914

A pansy for your thoughts ... "
Hamlet

Liliputins. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2025/03/08/5867

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A penny for your thoughts
What's the meaning of the phrase 'A penny for your thoughts'?
An invitation to a person lost in thought to share his or her preoccupation.

What's the origin of the phrase 'A penny for your thoughts'?
Along with Biblical expressions, proverbs form the bulk of the very earliest phrases that have existed in English since the language was first recorded on paper. ‘A penny for your thoughts’ is one of the few that is neither of the above but which is of the same vintage.

The first known use of it is by Sir Thomas More in A Treatyce upon the last thynges, circa 1535:

In such wise yt not wtoute som note & reproch of suche vagaraunte mind, other folk sodainly say to them: a peny for your thought.

(A rough paraphrase of the above is “when people notice that someone appears disengaged and wish them to rejoin the conversation they ask ‘a penny for your thoughts’.”)

The expression became so well used that it was often shortened to ‘a penny for them’ or even just ‘penny’, as in H. G. Wells’ novel Love & Mr. Lewisham, 1900:



See also: the List of Proverbs.


The history of “A penny for your thoughts” in printed materials
Trend of a penny for your thoughts in printed material over time

Related articles
Idioms: A penny for your thoughts
Related phrases and meanings
Money
Pennies


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Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade in 1839, V. tricolor was associated with thought in the "language of flowers", often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French pens;e, "thought"): hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts". (What Shakespeare had in mind was V. tricolor, the wild pansy, not a modern garden pansy.)