Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🥣 A cereal brand 🪙 A US coin
Wheaties

Wheaties

9.9
A U.S. penny with two wheat stalks on the back, made 1909 to 1958
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : centavo 'Wheatie' (EE. UU., informal, histórico)
  • I found a Wheatie in my pocket!

Examples

  • He found several Wheaties while searching through his grandfather's old coin collection.

  • He paid the bus fare with a Wheatie.

  • Collectors often look for rare Wheaties from the early 1900s.

  • The young boy was excited to add a 1943 Wheaties to his collection.

  • The collector proudly displayed his rare Wheaties from the 1920s in a special case.

  • When sorting through change, she discovered a few old Wheaties mixed in with the pennies.

  • He decided to use a Wheaties to buy a candy bar from the vending machine.

Surface Forms

Wheaties plural
Wheatie singular

Morphology

Wheaties = wheat (semi-transparent) = wheat + ie + s

The coin name is formed from 'wheat' + an informal diminutive '-ie' referring to the wheat stalks on the reverse, so the connection is clear but requires cultural/numismatic knowledge.

Etymology

The word Wheaties for the old U.S. penny comes from the two wheat stalks on the coin's back, so collectors called those pennies 'Wheaties' because of the wheat picture.