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.
It borrowed until it couldn't borrow anymore to pay for a slew of programs, public employee pensions and other pelf it couldn't afford.
From US News ● May 26, 2016
But the fight was untainted because they were all honorable men who play golf for glory and not for pelf.
From Time Magazine Archive
You are evidently so enthralled by your mucky pelf and your self-serving stratagems that you have forgotten what your trusteeship means.
From Time Magazine Archive
Still not completely sure what pelf is, the owners have put him in charge of it.
From Time Magazine Archive
Its purpose, though, was plain; 'twas simply pelf; Whether a woman wild of glare, Or a colossal man shaving himself, All, all meant money there.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 3, 1887 by Various
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.
