The smallest copper coin. Used contemptuously, like “doit,” or “bawbee. See also NARY RED.

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1848.  

        I’ve sunk a very pretty sum
  In rides and sweetmeats past;
And haven’t now the first red cent—
  She drained me of the last.
Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects,’ p. 60.    

2

1848.  A hull day lost smack; and not a red cent made yet.—Id., p. 82.

3

1852.  At last I didn’t have a red cent, so I was obleeged to sell my nag to get money enough to come home with.—D. L. Roath, ‘Solomon Slug, &c.,’ p. 150 (N.Y.).

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1852.  It was a great catch for Miss Lewison, without a red cent of her own.—C. A. Bristed, ‘The Upper Ten Thousand,’ p. 144 (N.Y.).

5

1853.  It is a great consolation to me that we do not owe the Gentiles one red cent, or not more than one tenth part of the money we have got on hand, at the furthest.—Brigham Young, May 8: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 110.

6

1853.  We do not now owe a single red cent.—The same, June 5: Id., i. 256.

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1856.  I told him … no title was worth a red cent in this country.—Knick. Mag., xlviii. 318 (Sept.).

8

1857.  Mac went aboard the Stockton boat, without a “red” in his pocket.—San Francisco Call, Jan. 29.

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1857.  Has it cost him [Dr. Bernhisel] thousands of dollars to gain his election? No; it has not cost him a single dollar; no, not so much as a red cent.—Brigham Young, Sept. 13: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ v. 228.

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1858.  [He had in the Bank] not a dollar! not a dime! not a red cent!—Knick. Mag., li. 25 (Jan.).

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1861.  “That don’t change matters a red cent, stranger,” says the American in Charles Lever’s ‘One of them,’ p. 134.

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1878.  Feelin’s ain’t worth a red cent without they come to facts, no more’n flowers that ain’t fruit-blows.—Rose T. Cooke, ‘Happy Dodd,’ chap. xii.

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