Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alicia, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them.

Maybe.

Let's get to our first question this week.

First question this week comes from Hashim Shakir.

Hi Hashim.

Hashim says, could you please tell me the meaning of this idiom?

Penny for your thoughts.

Thanks for answering.

Sure, penny for your thoughts. This is a little bit of an old-fashioned expression.

It's a kind of fun way to say, what are you thinking? Or what are you thinking about?

So when someone says penny for your thoughts, the penny in this expression refers to the US coin. So a penny is one cent. It's the smallest denomination,

the smallest value coin that we have in the USA. So when someone says penny for your thoughts,

it's like saying, I will give you a penny, so a very small amount of money, in exchange

for telling me what you're thinking about. So we tend to use this expression when we see somebody that looks like they're kind of lost

in their mind.

They're thinking really hard about something, but we're not sure what.

So maybe when your friend stops talking for a bit, like it starts looking out the window,

and it goes very quiet, you might say penny for your thoughts, which is another

way to say, what are you thinking about? So again, this sounds a little bit old fashioned, and

we don't really use this so much in everyday conversation these days, but I suppose some

people might prefer to use it or might like this old fashioned expression. It's like saying,

I'll give you a little bit of money if you tell me about what you're

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