Cottage Q&A
QUESTIONI've noticed that some packages of nails come with a "d" measurement (for example, a package of 4" framing nails also says that they are "20d"). What does the "d" stand for?
ANSWER
The "d" stands for "penny," and its survival on your package of nails is an odd accident of history. In a long-ago era of low and stable prices, the length of general-purpose nails was expressed in "penny sizes" that indicated their price per hundred. So, for instance, your 4" framing nails were called "twenty-penny nails," and 100 of them would set you back 20 pence in Britain and (by extension) in its North American colonies.
The old abbreviation "d" for penny, which continued in use in Great Britain up until the metrification of British currency in 1971, derives from the Latin word denarius, an ancient Roman silver coin that appears to have been the model for the earliest coins struck in the Middle Ages throughout Britain and Europe. According to Marilyn Vandergroen, a sales rep for Vancouver-based nail manufacturer Tree Island Industries, the designation persists on packaging because U.S. customers still order nails this way.
* Published in the July/August 2003 issue of Cottage Life
