- 1一毛錢、一分錢（原為法國小銅幣；英文裡幾乎只用在否定句「連一毛錢都沒有」）
In modern English this is almost never a real coin — it is a way of saying 'the smallest possible bit of money'. It lives almost entirely inside negative sentences: 'I haven't got a sou', 'he left without a sou', 'she didn't give me a sou.' If you take it out of the negative it sounds strange; nobody says 'I have three sous'. The feeling is slightly playful and old-fashioned, the same slot filled by 'a penny', 'a cent', 'a bean' or '一毛錢'. Behind it is a real French coin, a small copper piece worth very little, which stopped being official money long ago but stayed alive in French phrases about being broke. English borrowed both the coin and the attitude. So when a writer uses 'sou' rather than 'penny', it usually adds a light French or old-Europe colour — a character in a Paris story, or someone being funny about how poor they are.
組成Borrowed straight from French sou, the name of a small old copper coin. That French word goes back to Latin solidus, a Roman gold coin — the same Latin word that gave English 'solid' and the money sign 's.' once used for shillings.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Souname
- 1
A surname.
sounoun/suː/
- 1
historicalAn old French copper coin equal to one twentieth of a livre or twelve deniers; one sou is to the livre as one shilling is to the pound.
- He is grey, flat-footed and withered, with long, brittle nails that set your nerves on edge while he scrapes up your two sous.
- 2
datedslangCent; pocket money.
- 3
datedA thing of the smallest value; a whit; a jot.
- I do not care a sou for your excuses.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。