Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of pin money.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • You talk as if he had twenty pound a-year for pin-money, like you and Lavinia, that might go with half a gown a-year, if good old Numps did not help you.

    Camilla 2008

  • I begged my publisher for a little pin-money to speak in D.C. Strangely, the Editor-in-Chief himself called from Cambridge, to say no.

    Giles Slade: Don't Be A Whiner 2008

  • The tall Cointet politely gave Mme. Sechard a dozen thread-pattern forks and spoons and a beautiful Ternaux shawl, by way of pin-money, said he, and to efface any unpleasant impression made in the heat of discussion.

    Eve and David 2007

  • Abbeys were given to queens, to furnish them with pin-money.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • “Can you lend me a few sous?” and the poor woman, glad to be able to do something for a man whom her confessor held up to her as her lord and master, returned him in the course of the winter several crowns out of the “pin-money.”

    Eug�nie Grandet 2007

  • The tall Cointet politely gave Mme. Sechard a dozen thread-pattern forks and spoons and a beautiful Ternaux shawl, by way of pin-money, said he, and to efface any unpleasant impression made in the heat of discussion.

    Eve and David 2007

  • I will take care, madam, said I, that Miss Mansfield, if she will consent to make Lord W. happy, shall have very handsome settlements, and such an allowance for pin-money, as shall enable her to gratify every moderate, every reasonable wish of her heart.

    Sir Charles Grandison 2006

  • She is sure to have been brought up like a duchess, and want the whole of her money for pin-money — a deuced expensive thing is

    The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton 2006

  • Clothilde; her residence in Eaton Square; her pin-money at two thousand a year; and her affections on nobody.

    The Silver Spoon 2004

  • Already there had been difficulties as to settlements, difficulties as to pin-money, difficulties as to residence, Lady Augustus having been very urgent.

    The American Senator 2004

Comments

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  • "There was a time when even the property which a woman owned in her own right had to be held in trust for her by a man: her father, her guardian or her husband. The Married Woman's Property Act of 1882 changed that, and for the propertied classes it proved to be a change for the better. Moreover, a wife whose husband gave her a separate allowance for her own use, pin-money, was entitled to save it if she chose and to dispose of it as she wished."

    - 'King Cophetua and the beggarmaid', Germaine Greer in The Madwoman's Underclothes.

    April 14, 2008