Max Bernard
Member
Prague (Czech Republic, Central Europe)
Czech
- Apr 18, 2017
- #1
Hello, I have one question/problem: Lyric of song King of the Road:
Ah but, two hours of pushin' broom (I understand, it = sweeping)
buys an eight by twelve four-bit room ("Four bit" = $0,5? What does buys he? What does this words together mean?)
Thank you!
JulianStuart
Senior Member
Sonoma County CA
English (UK then US)
- Apr 18, 2017
- #2
The first line of the song is
"Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let*, fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin' broom"
The cost to rent a room is $0.50 and it's a small room (8 feet by 12 feet)
*let =
- to allow to be leased:[no object]an apartment to let.
kentix
Senior Member
English - U.S.
- Apr 18, 2017
- #3
Is that 50 cents a day, do you think?
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JulianStuart
Senior Member
Sonoma County CA
English (UK then US)
- Apr 18, 2017
- #4
Given how old the song is I suspect so
Loob
Senior Member
English UK
- Apr 19, 2017
- #5
I've always been intrigued by the "four-bit room" part. How can "four-bit" mean "fifty cents"?
kentix
Senior Member
English - U.S.
- Apr 19, 2017
- #6
Two bits is long-standing American slang for 25 cents.
For example, it appears in the well known phrase "Shave and a haircut...two bits", meaning that's the cost of a shave and a haircut (in the old, old days). Apparently there's some great uncertainty about where that phrase actually originated but it's spoken like it came from a song or something - with a sing-songy rhythm.
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Loob
Senior Member
English UK
- Apr 19, 2017
- #7
Ah - so is there such a thing as "one bit"?
Myridon
Senior Member
Texas
English - US
- Apr 19, 2017
- #8
bit - WordReference.com Dictionary of English
3 an amount equivalent to 12½ U.S. cents (used only in even multiples):two bits; six bits.
Meaning "small piece, fragment" is from c. 1600. Sense of "short space of time" is 1650s. Theatrical bit part is from 1909. Money sense in two bits, etc. is originally from Southern U.S. and West Indies, in reference to silver wedges cut or stamped from Spanish dollars (later Mexican reals); transferred to "eighth of a dollar."
The real de a ocho, also known as the Spanish dollar, the eight-real coin, or the piece of eight (Spanish peso de ocho), is a silver coin, of approximately 38 mm diameter, worth eight reales, that was minted in the Spanish Empire after 1598. Its purpose was to correspond to the German thaler.
We don't use "one bit" any more because it doesn't fit with our current coinage.
Loob
Senior Member
English UK
- Apr 19, 2017
- #9
The WR dictionary extract seems to indicate that you only use "two-bit", "four-bit" etc. I take it that's how you see it too, Myridon?
Myridon
Senior Member
Texas
English - US
- Apr 19, 2017
- #10
Loob said:
The dictionary extract seems to indicate that you only use "two-bit", "four-bit" etc. I take it that's how you see it too, Myridon?
Right. We haven't had any half-cent coins since 1857 so there's no way to make 12.5 cents with coins worth one cent, five cents, and ten cents. A quarter (1/4 of a dollar) is two bits, but there's no way to have one, three, five, or other odd number of bits so we don't talk about those amounts.
Loob
Senior Member
English UK
- Apr 19, 2017
- #11
Thank you. I'm sure I'll understand this when my mind stops boggling...
GreenWhiteBlue
Banned
The City of New York
USA - English
- Apr 19, 2017
- #12
As noted above, the concept of 8 "bits" in a dollar derives from the Spanish silver dollar coin that was worth 8 reales. These coins were the "pieces of eight" one finds in pirate stories. As the most common coin in use in the New World, the Spanish dollar was the model for the US dollar - and thus the idea of the dollar having 8 component parts. When the New York Stock exchange began at the end of the 18th Century, stock prices were calculated in eighths of a dollar (later modified to sixteenths), and this continued to be the way stock prices were reported on the NYSE until 2001.
kentix
Senior Member
English - U.S.
- Apr 19, 2017
- #13
Keep in mind it's not common current slang. It's mostly seen in old songs and old movies. There's not much left you can buy for two bits (certainly not a shave and a haircut) and, even for those things that you can, no one today will tell you that you owe them two bits. So your mind can unboggle a bit.
Loob
Senior Member
English UK
- Apr 19, 2017
- #14
Fascinating, GWB - thank you!
---
And thank you, kentix, too
RM1(SS)
Senior Member
Connecticut
English - US (Midwest)
- Apr 19, 2017
- #15
Old cheerleading call, still (I think) current when I was in high school:
"Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar --
All for [team name], stand up and holler!"
kentix
Senior Member
English - U.S.
- Apr 19, 2017
- #16
Yes, I remember that one. I have no idea if any child in school today would know it.
Max Bernard
Member
Prague (Czech Republic, Central Europe)
Czech
- Apr 19, 2017
- #17
Thank you, it is very interesting to me! Completely different reality than here!
I'll ask my English teacher, if she can count in bits...
JulianStuart
Senior Member
Sonoma County CA
English (UK then US)
- Apr 19, 2017
- #18
(And of course, these days, there are eight bits in a byte)
Max Bernard
Member
Prague (Czech Republic, Central Europe)
Czech
- Apr 19, 2017
- #19
JulianStuart: And these things (Spanish silver dollar / 8 bits >>> a term "byte/8 bits") are really derived?
M
Mr. Useful Knowledge
New Member
US English
- Feb 7, 2024
- #20
Max Bernard said:
Hello, I have one question/problem: Lyric of song King of the Road:
Ah but, two hours of pushin' broom (I understand, it = sweeping)
buys an eight by twelve four-bit room ("Four bit" = $0,5? What does buys he? What does this words together mean?)Thank you!
Back in Abe Lincoln's day two bits was 25 cents, SO, that means that One Bit equalled 12.5 cents.
In the Song by Roger Miller "8 hours of pushin' broom buys a 8 (foot) by 12 (foot) 4 bit room", (12.5/bit x 4= 50 cents.)
That's a room barely big enough to put a single mattress or perhaps an army cot in, but if you're poor with no money whatsoever then 8 hours of sweeping dirt into a dustpan and emptying it buys a dry place inside a building overnight instead of sleeping outside in the elements of cold, rainy, dirty, unsafe, and pest infested outside.
A happy and positive song for enduring a lonely, miserable, and hellish way to exist!
Wordy McWordface
Senior Member
SSBE (Standard Southern British English)
- Feb 7, 2024
- #21
Also still boggling somewhat, but it's interesting to learn that even the US money system isn't entirely decimal.....
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Roxxxannne
Senior Member
American English (New England and NYC)
- Feb 7, 2024
- #22
Well, wasn't entirely decimal. Bits are not used in calculating the price of anything these days. 'Two-bit' still means 'cheap' in the sense of 'poor quality,' but I doubt that many people use it.
kentix
Senior Member
English - U.S.
- Feb 7, 2024
- #23
I think, but I haven't done any actual research, that the concept of two bits might possibly go all the way back to the Spanish pieces of eight, which were Spanish coins cut into eight pieces by dividing them in half and in half and in half. 25 cents is a quarter of a dollar and two pieces of eight are a quarter of the 8 pieces in the full coin.
Early American money was based on Spanish money, specifically the Spanish dollar.
We've been binary (powers of two) as long as we've been decimal.
A
ain'ttranslationfun?
Senior Member
US English
- Feb 7, 2024
- #24
If two hours if pushin' a broom buys an 8' by 12" four-bit room, he's getting the equivalent of 25¢ an hour 'in kind' (not in money but in a place to sleep).
< Topic drift removed, Cagey, moderator >
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Roxxxannne
Senior Member
American English (New England and NYC)
- Feb 7, 2024
- #25
Very little money was minted (or printed) in the North American English colonies, but shillings were minted in Massachusetts in the mid-seventeenth century, and Spanish reales (as international currency) and British coins circulated in the colonies also. The colonies had a surprising (to us) cashless economy.
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