Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Fippenny bit

Fippenny bit (? o?)

[Corruption of five penny bit.]

The Spanish half real, or one sixteenth of a dollar, -- so called in Pennsylvania and the adjacent States. [Obsolete]

Before the act of Congress, Feb. 21, 1857, caused the adoption of decimal coins and the withdrawal of foreign coinage from circulation, this coin passed currently for 6¼ cents, and was called in New England a fourpence ha'penny or fourpence; in New York a sixpence; in Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc., a fip; and in Louisiana, a picayune.