thin dime left

[keannu]

What does this "thin" mean? "poor quality"? It must not mean a physically thin coin.

mo2-43
ex)One day Howard Kelly, a poor boy, who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when Grace, a lovely young woman, opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water.

 

[SoothingDave]

It's just an expression adding emphasis to the solitary nature of the one coin.

Only for dimes, though. You wouldn't have left in your pocket one thin penny.

(Dimes are thinner than the other US coins.)

 

[BobK]

I think (though it's not the sort of money that is current in my life) it's a bit like a 'red cent'; it's not actually red, it just emphasizes the smallness of the amount.

b

PS Seemingly irrelevant adjectives seem to collocate with extremes of money: at one end of the continuum you've got 'a thin dime', and at the other end there's 'a pretty penny'!