The Golden Angel
[Ulysses S Grant] To, 'coin a phrase' is now rarely used with its original 'invent a new phrase' meaning but is almost always used ironically to introduce a banal or clichéd sentiment. This usage began in the mid 20th century; for example, in Francis Brett Young's novel Mr. Lucton's Freedom , 1940: "It takes all sorts to make a world, to coin a phrase." Coining, in the sense of creating, derives from the coining of money by stamping metal with a die. Coins - also variously spelled coynes, coigns, coignes or quoins - were the blank, usually circular, disks from which money was minted. This usage derived from an earlier 14th century meaning of coin, which meant wedge. The wedge-shaped dies which were used to stamp the blank...