lucre

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“
Bot for the lucre, as sche him tolde.

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Money or profits.
  2. Word History
    When William Tyndale translated aiskhron kerdos, "shameful gain” (Titus 1:11), as filthy lucre in his edition of the Bible, he was tarring the word lucre for the rest of its existence. But we cannot lay the pejorative sense of lucre completely at Tyndale's door. He was merely a link, albeit a strong one, in a process that had begun long before with respect to the ancestor of our word, the Latin word lucrum, "material gain, profit.” This process was probably controlled by the inevitable conjunction of profit, especially monetary profit, with evils such as greed. In Latin lucrum also meant "avarice,” and in Middle English lucre, besides meaning "monetary gain, profit,” meant "illicit gain.” Furthermore, many of the contexts in which the neutral sense of the word appeared were not wholly neutral, as in "It is a wofull thyng . . . ffor lucre of goode . . . A man to fals his othe [it is a sad thing for a man to betray his oath for monetary gain].” Tyndale thus merely helped the process along when he gave us the phrase filthy lucre.

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Examples (50)

  • Xavier perceiving that the love of lucre was his governing passion, made offers to him, by Pereyra, of thirty thousand crowns in pure gift; but the desire of engrossing all the gain, was the reason which prevailed with Atayda to refuse it. —  The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI.
  • Instead, the lucre is simply pocketed by distant company managers and stockholders, who tend not to care one iota about the welfare of the communities from which their resources and employee pool originate. —  GlobalResearch.ca
  • And in these economic climes, beauty industry insiders understand that consumers are looking for products that give you a little more luxe for your lucre, a sparkle of gold, a flash of glitz for a little less. —  afrobella
  • The LDS Church invested a great deal of filthy lucre, and instructed their general membership to donate MILLIONS to push legislation which would affect people in another State, and people who were not even members of the Church.
  • What they neglected to realize is that in order for those mega companies to make their filthy lucre, they need customers, and when those prospective customers are out of work, they ain't buying diddly squat. —  Recovering Liberal
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Latin lucrum; see lau- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also luker; from Middle English *lukre (erroneously lurke, luk, Prompt. Parv.), from Old French (and F.) lucre = Spanish Portuguese Italian lucro, from Latin lucrum, gain, with formative -crum, from a √ lu, which appears also in Irish luach, price, wages, Greek λεία, ληίη, booty (see Lestes), Old Bulgarian lovŭ, booty (Russian lovitē, take as booty); Anglo-Saxon leán = Old Saxon OFries. lōn = Dutch loon = Middle Low German lōn = Old High German Middle High German lōn, German lohn = Icelandic laun = Swedish Danish lön = Gothic (Moesogothic) laun, reward.
  2. Early modern English also luker; from Old French lucrer, from Latin lucrari, gain, from lucrum, gain: see lucre, n.
 

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/ˈljukər/
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