A centime is a tiny unit of money: one hundredth of a franc, and of a few other currencies that copied the French system. For a long time France, Belgium, and Luxembourg used francs and centimes; Switzerland still does in its French-speaking parts, and some African countries that use the CFA franc still count centimes too. You can hold the idea next to a US cent (one hundredth of a dollar), but it is not the same coin and not the same country. People almost never handed over a single centime in a shop — it was too small — though prices were written with it, the way we write the numbers after a decimal point. In English today you mostly meet the word in older books, museum labels, or talk about money before the euro. It feels a little old and a little French; it is not a word for the night market. Though actually, a few other languages kept a cousin of the same coin-word (céntimo, santim), which is why you may see near-spellings in other countries’ money.

生丁（法郎等的百分之一；別當成美金的 cent／分）