Picayune
Template:Short description Template:About
A picayune was a Spanish coin, worth half a real or one sixteenth of a dollar. Its name derives from the French picaillon, which is itself from the Provençal picaioun, the name of an unrelated small copper coin from Savoy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By extension, picayune can mean "trivial" or "of little value".
Aside from being used in Spanish territories, the picayune and other Spanish currency was used throughout the colonial United States. Spanish dollars were made legal tender in the U.S. by an act on February 9, 1793.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They remained so until demonetization on February 21, 1857.<ref>Spanish Silver: General Introduction Coin and Currency Collections - University of Notre Dame. Retrieved on April 7, 2008.</ref> The coin's name first appeared in Florida and Louisiana, where its value was nominally one sixteenth of a dollar, i.e. Template:Frac cents,<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref> and whose name was sometimes used in place of the U.S. nickel.<ref name="Probert">"Picayune", Probert Encyclopedia. Retrieved on April 10, 2008.</ref><ref>"Picayune", World Wide Words. Retrieved on April 8, 2008.</ref>
A newspaper published in New Orleans since the 1830s, the Times-Picayune (originally The Picayune), was named after the coin.<ref name = "CJR">Template:Cite journal</ref>
A city in southern Mississippi has the name Picayune.