pelf
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of pelf
1300–50; Middle English < Old French pelfre booty
Explanation
Empty your sister's piggy bank and you'll have a pocket full of pelf, or money. It's going to take a lot more pelf than that to buy that fancy bicycle you've got your eye on, though! This old-fashioned word for money isn't used much these days—you're much more likely to say "cash," "dough," or even "cheese." When it was in fashion, pelf often referred to stolen cash, and the word can be traced back to the Old French pelfre, "loot," a source it shares with pilfer, "steal."
Vocabulary lists containing pelf
Selection Vocabulary 1, Unit 1
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Selection Vocabulary 3, Unit 1
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Society and Solitude
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And for her trouble somehow ends up with the whole weird Pelf family descending on her, maskless, prompting her to flee to her father’s house with Shep.
From Washington Post • May 4, 2022
After I got the double in Game 1, they all — Hojo, Pelf, all those guys, D-Wright — they were all texting me.
From New York Times • Oct. 15, 2010
"Pelf," supplied George, on a thin squeak that was shot out by the excitement of seeing events so lustily playing his hand.
From Once Aboard the Lugger by Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Proud is Pelf; But might not Legend lesson Labour's self?
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105 September 23, 1893 by Various
Ah, Love! could you and I lay on the Shelf This Sorry Scheme of Ill-begotten Pelf, Would we not Shatter it to Bits, and Then Remould a System just to suit Ourself?
From The Re-echo Club by Wells, Carolyn
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
