“I’m waiting for the penny to drop”.
This is a British idiom, not related to the American idiom about “the other shoe”. It is what you might say if you have just told somebody something, and it’s clear from the expression on their face that they haven’t grasped the implications of what they’ve heard. It might be obvious puzzlement, or it might just be the absence of whatever reaction would be most natural, whether joy or anger or outright terror. When the point of what you’ve just said “sinks in” (to use a different metaphor), they might confess “The penny’s just dropped”, or you may be able to see it for yourself.
I’ve seen online explanations, but these are usually missing one vital detail, presumably because the explainers were not on the scene when that detail was obvious. This is an attempt to get that detail on the record before it disappears from living memory.
It is rightly explained in terms of old-fashioned coin-using machines, which depended on mechanics rather than electronics. I’m going to use the example of the simple chocolate-vending machines which used to be found on railway stations, because that’s the kind I knew best.
The mechanism was fairly simple to understand, even from the outside. The bars of Cadbury’s chocolate would be stacked vertically in a metal case. There was a coin-slot at the top of the case and a drawer at the bottom. The customer would drop his penny in the slot and it would fall to the bottom of the compartment, where it would press a lever. The lever would open a little door underneath the stack and one bar would drop into the drawer. The customer would then pull out the drawer and claim the contents.
As often happens, the weak point in the mechanism was the human element. Everything went fine as long as these events came in the right sequence. Too frequently, though, the customer would be impatient, and would pull out the drawer before the chocolate had finished dropping, or even before the chocolate had started dropping. In the first case, the bar would jam the drawer so that it could not be fully opened, and in the rare second case it would be jammed behind the drawer. Either way the customer would get no chocolate. Neither would anybody else for the next six months, because there was nobody on the station responsible for unjamming the machines , though they would still treacherously take your money.
Obviously customers would be well-advised to be more patient and allow more time. The vital detail I mentioned is that this advice had become necessary enough to be clearly printed in a notice on the machine itself, and the wording of that notice was;
“WAIT FOR THE PENNY TO DROP”
Admittedly, by the time I was travelling around England being interviewed for universities, the impact of inflation had enforced a change in wording, to the more flexible;
“WAIT FOR THE COIN TO DROP”
But by that time the original version was already proverbial.
So the popular remark is a metaphor. Observers are waiting for the information received to travel, like the original coin, from one end of the receiver’s brain to the other, where it will take effect and produce a reaction. The vital detail missing from most explanations is that the wording of the popular remark has been directly borrowed from the wording which Cadbury’s customers would see in front of them (and that was why it came into use in that form).
Perhaps somebody would be good enough to inform Wikipedia.
This is a British idiom, not related to the American idiom about “the other shoe”. It is what you might say if you have just told somebody something, and it’s clear from the expression on their face that they haven’t grasped the implications of what they’ve heard. It might be obvious puzzlement, or it might just be the absence of whatever reaction would be most natural, whether joy or anger or outright terror. When the point of what you’ve just said “sinks in” (to use a different metaphor), they might confess “The penny’s just dropped”, or you may be able to see it for yourself.
I’ve seen online explanations, but these are usually missing one vital detail, presumably because the explainers were not on the scene when that detail was obvious. This is an attempt to get that detail on the record before it disappears from living memory.
It is rightly explained in terms of old-fashioned coin-using machines, which depended on mechanics rather than electronics. I’m going to use the example of the simple chocolate-vending machines which used to be found on railway stations, because that’s the kind I knew best.
The mechanism was fairly simple to understand, even from the outside. The bars of Cadbury’s chocolate would be stacked vertically in a metal case. There was a coin-slot at the top of the case and a drawer at the bottom. The customer would drop his penny in the slot and it would fall to the bottom of the compartment, where it would press a lever. The lever would open a little door underneath the stack and one bar would drop into the drawer. The customer would then pull out the drawer and claim the contents.
As often happens, the weak point in the mechanism was the human element. Everything went fine as long as these events came in the right sequence. Too frequently, though, the customer would be impatient, and would pull out the drawer before the chocolate had finished dropping, or even before the chocolate had started dropping. In the first case, the bar would jam the drawer so that it could not be fully opened, and in the rare second case it would be jammed behind the drawer. Either way the customer would get no chocolate. Neither would anybody else for the next six months, because there was nobody on the station responsible for unjamming the machines , though they would still treacherously take your money.
Obviously customers would be well-advised to be more patient and allow more time. The vital detail I mentioned is that this advice had become necessary enough to be clearly printed in a notice on the machine itself, and the wording of that notice was;
“WAIT FOR THE PENNY TO DROP”
Admittedly, by the time I was travelling around England being interviewed for universities, the impact of inflation had enforced a change in wording, to the more flexible;
“WAIT FOR THE COIN TO DROP”
But by that time the original version was already proverbial.
So the popular remark is a metaphor. Observers are waiting for the information received to travel, like the original coin, from one end of the receiver’s brain to the other, where it will take effect and produce a reaction. The vital detail missing from most explanations is that the wording of the popular remark has been directly borrowed from the wording which Cadbury’s customers would see in front of them (and that was why it came into use in that form).
Perhaps somebody would be good enough to inform Wikipedia.
![[Image: p1YBwY8.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/p1YBwY8.gif)
![[Image: OFMs7EI.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/OFMs7EI.jpg)
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