Cent (currency)
monetary unit in many national currencies
The cent is a monetary sub-unit of many currencies that equals a hundredth (1⁄100) of the currency's base unit. The word derives from the Latin centum, 'hundred'.
The cent sign is commonly a simple minuscule (lower case) letter c, such as with the euro. In North America, the c is crossed by a diagonal or vertical stroke (depending on typeface), yielding the character ¢.
The United States one cent coin is generally known by the nickname "penny", alluding to the British coin and unit of that name. Australia ended production of its 1c coin in 1990. New Zealand last produced its 1c coin in 1988, as did Canada in 2012 and the US in 2025. Some Eurozone countries ended production of the 1 euro cent coin, most recently Slovakia in 2022.
Symbol
The cent may be represented by the cent sign, written in various ways according to the national convention and font choice. The most commonly seen forms are a minuscule letter c crossed by a diagonal stroke, a c crossed by a vertical line, or a simple c, depending on the currency (see below).
“Cent (currency)” enters the record as monetary unit in many national currencies. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cent, currency and monetary can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q58093. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1988, 2012 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cent (currency)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.