Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A usually closable bag used for carrying keys, a wallet, and other personal items, especially by women; a handbag.
- noun A usually closable small bag or pouch for carrying money.
- noun Something that resembles a bag or pouch, such as a purse seine.
- noun An available amount of money or resources.
- noun A sum of money collected as a present or offered as a prize.
- transitive verb To gather or contract (the lips or brow) into wrinkles or folds; pucker.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To put in a purse.
- To contract into folds or wrinkles; knit; pucker: frequently with up.
- To take purses; rob.
- noun A bag or pouch; specifically, a small bag or case in which money is contained or carried.
- noun Figuratively, money; means; resources.
- noun A treasury; finances: as, to exhaust a nation's purse, or the public purse.
- noun A purseful of money; a sum of money offered as a prize or collected as a present: as, to win the purse in a horse-race; to make up a purse as a present.
- noun A specific sum of money.
- noun In zoology and anatomy, some kind of a pouch, bursa, marsupium, or ovicapsule.
- noun An officer of the British royal household charged with the payment of the sovereign's private expenses. His official title is keeper of the privy purse.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To put into a purse.
- transitive verb To draw up or contract into folds or wrinkles, like the mouth of a purse; to pucker; to knit.
- noun A small bag or pouch, the opening of which is made to draw together closely, used to carry money in; by extension, any receptacle for money carried on the person; a wallet; a pocketbook; a portemonnaie.
- noun Hence, a treasury; finances.
- noun A sum of money offered as a prize, or collected as a present
- noun A specific sum of money.
- noun In Turkey, the sum of 500 piasters.
- noun In Persia, the sum of 50 tomans.
- noun poverty or want of resources.
- noun wealth; riches.
- noun (Zoöl.) any land crab of the genus Birgus, allied to the hermit crabs. They sometimes weigh twenty pounds or more, and are very strong, being able to crack cocoanuts with the large claw. They chiefly inhabit the tropical islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, living in holes and feeding upon fruit. Called also
palm crab . - noun a fishing net, the mouth of which may be closed or drawn together like a purse.
- noun pride of money; insolence proceeding from the possession of wealth.
- noun (Zoöl.) See Pocket gopher, under
Pocket . - noun the military power and financial resources of a nation.
- intransitive verb Obs. & R. To steal purses; to rob.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A small
bag for carryingmoney . - noun US A
handbag (small bag usually used by women for carrying various small personal items) - noun A
quantity ofmoney given for a particular purpose. - verb transitive To press (one's lips) in and together so that they
protrude . - verb intransitive, obsolete, rare To
steal purses; torob .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a sum of money spoken of as the contents of a money purse
- verb contract one's lips into a rounded shape
- noun a sum of money offered as a prize
- noun a container used for carrying money and small personal items or accessories (especially by women)
- noun a small bag for carrying money
- verb gather or contract into wrinkles or folds; pucker
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word purse.
Examples
-
P.S. googling has revealed that Americans use the term purse for a woman's bag whereas the Brits refer to it as a bag.
Qwaider Planet 2009
-
Weirdest thing in my purse is a kool-aid packet a friend gave me the other day.
-
A Prada purse is as rare a sighting here as a pair of sensible shoes.
Sayonara, Prada 2009
-
From her id, social security card, and credit cards to her photos and other memorabilia the purse is a complete collection of information of a woman?
-
A Prada purse is as rare a sighting here as a pair of sensible shoes.
Sayonara, Prada 2009
-
To a little kid a purse is a magical thing that amazingly holds stuff.
-
In my purse is the neatly folded contract for a six-month stay.
-
In my purse is the neatly folded contract for a six-month stay.
-
I will see, my heart, when my purse is a little less empty, what I can do for those good and saintly Fathers of the sacred Valley [La Trappe].
The Ruin of a Princess Cl 1912
-
Tell you what she looked old and ugly, just get her a pair of seal slippers and a seal skin purse so she can feel better in prison ... haha!
-
“Any guy, in my experience, who has to constantly tell you how tough he is ... is not a tough guy,” Avenatti said of Michael Cohen, the attorney who was the subject of FBI raids on Monday. “He’s closer to a purse puppy than a tough guy,” Avenatti said.
Stormy Lawyer Taunts Trump: Michael Cohen Will ‘Fold Like A Cheap Deck Of Cards’ Ed Mazza 2018
chained_bear commented on the word purse
"The winner's share of any purse was hung in a sack near the finish line, and after the deciding heat the winning driver would steer his horse back there, dismount, and remove it to varying levels of applause. The custom is no more, but turf journalists still write about a horseman or horse 'taking down' the purse money at a particular race."
—Charles Leerhsen, Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 76
October 23, 2008