A pity Penny isn’t here otherwise a snap of her at the bus-stop would have done the trick, for today’s word was “pennyweighting”, although it actually means: ‘The theft of jewellery, typically through sleight of hand substitution of fake stones for real ones in a jeweller’s shop, etc.’, OED. This was, obviously, not going to be an easy one to find without stumbling on a burglary in progress, so once more, some tangental thinking was required. Last December I blogged that the Viennese hadn’t quite found the right fence for their eternity padlocks, as the one they’d chosen had straight bars and all the padlocks slid to the bottom. Well, I discovered that they now have a new padlock fence and although the padlocks will stay in place, it’s going to need a good overarm to get the key into the Danube from that distance. If today’s lovers are substituting gold lockets from the jewellers with cheap padlocks from the ironmonger’s – albeit openly without a sleight of hand – then this could be a form of 21st-century penny weighting.
Day #262 of a 365 project, where the daily pic is informed by the OED word of the day.