Lepton pl. Lepta (Greek: Λεπτόν pl. Λεπτά) is the name of various fractional units of currency used in the Greek-speaking world from antiquity until today. The word means "small" or "thin", and during classical and Hellenistic times a lepton was always a small value coin, usually the smallest available denomination of another currency. The coin in the lesson of the widow's mite is referred to as a lepton.
In modern Greece, Lepton (modern form: Lepto, Λεπτό) is the name of the 1/100 denomination of all the official currencies of the Greek state: the phoenix (1827–1832), the drachma (1832–2001) and the euro (2002–current) – the name is the Greek form of "euro cent." Its unofficial currency sign is Λ (lambda). Until the introduction of the euro, no Greek coin had been minted with a denomination lower than 5 lepta since the late 1870s.
Famous quotes containing the word greek:
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)