COIN

9 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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COINAuthored
The Law Mind • 1191 words
Definition
A piece of metal stamped with authorized marks and issued by governmental authority as legal tender at a fixed value. Coin is a species of money: all coin is money, but not all money is coin. The distinguishing features are the metallic composition and the formal minting process by which raw metal is transformed into standardized, government-certified currency. In legal contexts, coin appears primarily in three registers: 1. Constitutional and statutory law. The power to coin money is an exclusive federal power in the United States. This meaning encompasses the entire regulatory framework governing the manufacture, composition, denomination, and legal-tender status of metallic currency. 2. Criminal law. Counterfeiting, debasing, or unlawfully possessing coin-making implements are distinct federal offenses. Historical sources use "coin" in defining these crimes with specificity, distinguishing offenses against metallic currency from those involving paper instruments. 3. Property and commercial law. Coin historically appeared in inventories, wills, estates, and commercial instruments as a distinct category of personal property — distinguished from banknotes, bills of exchange, or other paper money.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A piece of metal issued by government authority as currency; also used verbally to mean to fabricate or invent (as in "to coin a phrase"), and colloquially to mean earning money rapidly. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Metal stamped by governmental authority and made legally current as money; also a wedge or corner piece (quoin). Collective use was common: "the coin of the realm." The legal definition tracks the monetary sense closely, but legal sources impose precision that ordinary usage does not. Specifically, the legal definition requires governmental authority and a certified minting process — privately struck metal tokens, however coin-like in appearance, are not "coin" in law. The verbal sense (to coin a phrase) has no legal relevance. Researchers should also note that Webster's 1913 preserves the architectural meaning (quoin/wedge), which appears in period documents and is entirely unrelated to monetary law.
Common Confusion
Coin vs. Money. In ordinary usage these words are interchangeable. In legal usage, they are genus and species. Money is the broader category, encompassing any medium of exchange recognized by law or commerce — including paper currency, bank notes, and in some historical periods, commodity objects. Coin is restricted to stamped metal. Bouvier is explicit on this distinction, and researchers who treat coin and money as synonyms in historical legal documents risk misreading the scope of a statutory provision or testamentary bequest. Coin vs. Currency vs. Legal Tender. These terms overlap but diverge in technical use. Currency refers broadly to any circulating medium of exchange. Legal tender is a legal designation conferring the right to discharge debts. Not all coin is legal tender in all circumstances, and not all legal tender is coin. Historical sources often conflate these casually; modern statutory usage is more precise.
Why It Matters in Research
The constitutional dimension is the critical research anchor. Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value. Article I, Section 10 prohibits states from coining money or making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. These provisions generated substantial historical litigation and commentary. Researchers reading antebellum or Reconstruction-era sources will encounter "coin" as a constitutional flashpoint, particularly in debates over paper money, greenbacks, and the legal tender controversies of the Civil War era. In criminal law sources, the precision of "coin" versus related terms matters acutely. Federal statutes have historically distinguished counterfeiting coin from counterfeiting currency (paper instruments), with separate offense definitions and penalties. Historical treatises and digests may index these offenses under different headings. A researcher looking for counterfeiting law who searches only "currency" may miss an entire body of coin-specific material. In estates and probate sources, "coin" in a will or inventory is a term of art. Pre-20th-century estates frequently distinguished coin (gold and silver, sometimes specifically identified by denomination) from paper money, banknotes, and securities. Misreading a bequest of "coin" as a generic bequest of money can distort the analysis of what passed under a testamentary disposition. The historical shift in monetary systems is also a research trap. Before the Federal Reserve era, the legal significance of "coin" was far greater because metallic currency was the primary or exclusive form of lawful money in many transactions. Sources written under the gold standard, the bimetallic system, or during the free silver debates use "coin" with technical weight that later sources do not. Bouvier reflects the world of specie-based currency; Anderson's era already shows the beginnings of the transition. A researcher applying modern intuitions to 19th-century coin law will find the material disorienting.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treatment is the most analytically useful of the shelf sources. Bouvier draws the genus/species distinction between money and coin explicitly, crediting Wharton, and grounds coin's legal identity in two features: metallic composition and the coining process. This framing was standard in 19th-century legal literature and tracks the constitutional text. Anderson's entry, as recovered here, is fragmentary — the relevant text is truncated to "a piece of metal stamped," with the preceding context absorbed into an unrelated entry on coercion. What survives confirms the metallic-plus-stamping definition but adds nothing analytical. Researchers should treat Anderson as confirming the consensus definition rather than extending it. Neither source addresses the modern statutory framework for coinage, which is now codified in Title 31 of the United States Code. Neither source reflects post-gold-standard monetary law. Both sources predate the legal-tender cases in ways that can mislead; Bouvier in particular was written and revised across editions spanning the specie-versus-paper controversies, and edition dating matters when reading his commentary on coin's legal-tender status.
Jurisdictional Note
Coinage is an exclusively federal power in the United States; state coin law is essentially nonexistent as a separate body of doctrine. In international and comparative research, "coin" retains similar metallic/minting definitions but the regulatory framework, counterfeiting law, and legal-tender rules vary significantly by jurisdiction. Researchers working in English common law sources will find parallel structures but should note that British monetary history — including the historical role of the Royal Mint and the law of the realm's coin — operates on a distinct institutional track.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Currency and Legal Tender See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Coinage Power (Constitutional) See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Counterfeiting
Related Terms
Money — parent concept; the broader genus Legal Tender — the legal designation that gives coin (and other instruments) debt-discharging force Currency — circulating medium of exchange; overlapping but distinct Specie — gold or silver coin specifically; important in pre-Federal Reserve legal sources Counterfeiting — primary criminal offense context for coin in legal sources Coinage Power — the Article ISection 8 constitutional grant Bullion — uncoined metal; the pre-coin form; relevant in property and trade law Bimetallic System — historical monetary context in which coin law was most contested Legal Tender Cases — the constitutional litigation arising from Civil War paper money Debasing — the offense of diminishing the metal content of coin; distinct from counterfeiting
COINmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
A piece of metal stamped with certain marks and made current at a certain value. Strictly speaking, coin differs from money as the species differs from the genus. Money is any matter, whether metal, paper, beads, or shells, which has currency as a medium in commerce. Coin is a particular species, always made of metal, and struck according to a certain process called coin- ing. Wharton. To fashion pieces of metal into a prescribed shape, weight, and fineness, and stamp them with prescribed devices, by authority of government, that they may cir- culate as money. 22 Ind. 306; 2 Duvall 20. Congress alone has the power to coin money; Const. U. S. Art. 1, § 7; but the states may pass laws to punish the circula- tion of false coin; 5 How. 410. So long as a genuine silver coin is worn only by natural abrasion, is not appreciably diminished in weight, and retains the ap- pearance of a coin duly issued from the mint, it is a legal tender for its original value; 12 Fed. Rep. 840. See 160 U. S. 288. See COMMODITY.
COINmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
a master to a servant, or of a principal to his agent, does not, ordinarily, amount to coercion. If a wife acts in company with her husband in the commission of a tort or a crime other than treason, homicide, or other heinous felony, it is presumed, at common law, that she acted under coercion and without guilty intent. But non-coercion may be proved.1 See DURESS; WILL, 2. A piece of metal stamped and made legally current as money.4 "Coin" and "coinage" apply to the stamping of metal in some way so as to give them currency.5 To coin "The Congress shall have Power Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign 1 Jones v. Commonwealth, 80 Va. 20 (1885), Fauntleroy, J. 2 See 1 Bishop, Mar. & D. § 777, note, cases; 116 U. S. 75; 4 Paige, 425. As a married right, 19 Cent. Law J. 142 (1884), cases. 3 Yardley's Estate, 75 Pa. 211 (1874), Agnew, C. J. See also Brinckle v. Brinckle, 34 Leg. Int. 428 (1877); Hynes v. McDermott, 91 N. Y. 459-62 (1883), cases; Teter v. Teter, 88 Ind. 498 (1883), cases; Appeal of Reading Fire Ins. & Trust Co., 113 Pa. 208 (1886), cases; 1 L. con, with; habitare, to have often, i. e., abide Whart. Ev. §§ 84-85, cases. with,-54 Me. 366. • [Calef v. Calef, 54 Me. 366 (1867), Appleton, C. J. • Cannon v. United States, 116 U. S. 55, 74-75 (1885). 4 United States v. Bogart, 9 Bened. 315 (1878), Wallace, J.; 5 Phila. 403; 16 Gray, 240. • Meyer v. Roosevelt, 25 How. Pr. 105 (1863).
COINn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A quoin; a corner or external angle; a wegde. See Coigne, and Quoin. A piece of metal on which certain characters are stamped by government authority, making it legally current as money; -- much used in a collective sense. It is alleged that it [a subsidy] exceeded all the current coin of the realm. Hallam. That which serves for payment or recompense. The loss of present advantage to flesh and blood is repaid in a nobler coin. Hammond. Coin balance. See Illust. of Balance. -- To pay one in his own coin, to return to one the same kind of injury or ill treatment as has been received from him. [Colloq.]
COINv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To make of a definite fineness, and convert into coins, as a mass of metal; to mint; to manufacture; as, to coin silver dollars; to coin a medal. To make or fabricate; to invent; to originate; as, to coin a word. Some tale, some new pretense, he daily coined, To soothe his sister and delude her mind. Dryden. To acquire rapidly, as money; to make. Tenants cannot coin rent just at quarter day. Locke.
COINv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To manufacture counterfeit money. They cannot touch me for coining. Shak.
coinverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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To make of a definite fineness, and convert into coins, as a mass of metal. | To make or fabricate (especially a word or phrase). | To acquire rapidly, as money; to make.
COINnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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Abbreviation of counterinsurgency.
coinnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
A piece of currency, usually metallic and in the shape of a disc, but sometimes polygonal, or with a hole in the middle. | A token used in a special establishment like a casino. | That which serves for payment or recompense. | Something in broad circulation or use. | Money in general, not limited to coins. | One of the suits of minor arcana in tarot, or a card of that suit. | A corner or external angle. | A small circular slice of food. | Ellipsis of cryptocoin; a cryptocurrency.

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