In article ,
Franz Heymann wrote:

The fairy cheated me. I only won threepence per tooth.

Was it called a tickie where you were?

Yes. I still have one or two.
The English spelling is "tickey" and in Afrikaans it is "tiekie". I
am not certain as to which came first. In Afrikaans lessons at
school, it used to be drummed into us that committing an Anglicism is
equivalent to breaking the eleventh commandment. We had to memorise
lists of such Anglicisms and "tiekie" was not on the list, so I
presume that it preceded the English version.

Where I was, it effectively didn't HAVE a written form, so there WAS
no 'correct' spelling. That could well indicate that it was borrowed
from the Africaans, as so many such words were. Everybody used them,
but formal communication was in Queen's English.

Q: How do you spell tickey?
A: Thruppence.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.