English Language & Usage Asked on March 31, 2021
There is a sentence
"He used to bring us a comic for a half-penny plain and a penny coloured."
Why does the ‘plain’ go after half-penny, not before a comic, if it means black and white and has nothing to do with a half-penny?
The price of the comic was a halfpenny for an uncoloured one, a penny if it was coloured.
A penny plain and twopence coloured was a well-known phrase in the 19th century. I don't know whether Robert Louis Stevenson originated it, but he used it as the title of an essay about the toy theatres (using paper cut-out figures) that he had played with as a boy. The child could either colour in their own figures or buy them ready-coloured.
Answered by Kate Bunting on March 31, 2021
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