English

Suffix

-worth

1. Denotes a quantity corresponding to the time, value or dimension of the suffixed term.
   • 1941, Betty Swallow, private correspondance, quoted in 2009, Dear Helen: Wartime Letters from a Londoner to Her American Pen Pal, University of Missouri Press (ISBN 9780826271808), page 177

     Well! he's doing well, now, partaking of a little boiled chicken, and an egg or so, while the average Britisher has a **** of a job to get a shillingworth of meat a week and has to queue up for hours for eggs.

   • 1951, Henry Sturmey, H. Walter Staner, The Autocar: A Journal Published in the Interests of the Mechanically Propelled Road Carriage, page 104

     [S]he alone, to the best of my knowledge, has ridden far and fast in all weathers in the passenger seat, which is not a seat at all but the aforesaid oil tank, all 3½-gallonsworth.

   • 2005, Peter Finch, Grahame Davies, The Big Book of Cardiff: New Writing from Europe's Youngest Capital, Poetry Wales Press

     I sway in my uncertainty; should I drain this and go? or seek another pintsworth of that impenetrable mystery?

Usage notes

Usually suffixes to the genitive form of nouns, which means that there is a connecting -s- infix between the noun and the suffix (bottlesworth, yearsworth). Monetary amounts such as pennyworth seem to be an exception to this.

Derived terms

• bottlesworth
• cupsworth
• daysworth
• hoursworth
• minutesworth
• yearsworth