Plural of centime; a monetary unit equal to one-hundredth of a franc or other base currency unit in various countries.
From French centime, from Latin centum (hundred) plus the French -ime suffix. Created when the metric system was adopted, making money units align with decimal math.
The centime shows genius design—by making currency decimal-based like the metric system, French mathematicians made financial calculations vastly easier than the old penny/shilling systems that required memorization.
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