Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Wealth or riches, especially when dishonestly acquired.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Frippery; rubbish; refuse; trash.
- n. Money; riches; “filtby lucre”: a contemptuous term. It has no plural.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Money; riches; lucre; gain; -- generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten or worthless. It has no plural.
WordNet 3.0
- n. informal terms for money
Etymologies
- Old French pelfre, "booty, stolen goods." It is related to pilfer. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Medieval Latin pelfra, pelfa, probably from Old French pelfre. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,”
The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
“The man was evidently consumed by ambition, highly interested in pelf and preferment, and a natural Tory who defended the slave trade and imperialism, which Adam Smith so much deplored.”
“These are wenches and they are always seeking only pelf.”
“Immortal gods I pray no pelf I speak for no-one but myself and so forth.”
“Why, the deals that the White house offered for our votes on the Healthcare Reform Bill are laughable next to the bribes, uh, we mean pelf, oh no, we mean incentives that will be coming from the corporate world.”
“Civilization is when all the mechanisms of the world are dedicated to chanelling pelf to the old.”
Financial Crime, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“ÂIt is their boodle, pelf and spoils that they are trying to preserve.”
“It is their boodle, pelf and spoils that they are trying to preserve.”
“Being a gentleman of literary pursuits, I am able to sneer at the grubby professionals who struggle so desperately for the meager pelf doled out to the originator of squalid tales and wretched screeds.”
“I believe in the Training of Children, black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pelf’.
-
Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 more...
-
Money
The various names for "money" have been scattered about the world in various countries and are now coming together at last in this hopefully vast list.
grosze, money, cash, dough, euro, grosz, zloty, toman, pood, pelf, krone, pesewa and 22 more...
-
You say 'money', I say...
Synonyms for money.
pelf, loot, cheese, greenbacks, cash, moolah, bucks, quid, pounds, numizmatics, clams, spondulicks and 1 more...
-
A Time of Gifts
lambent, gonfalon, ait, eyrie, haberdashery, belfry, capstan, spinney, barbican, hobnail, wharf, waterlogged and 64 more...
-
Surprising four-letter words
I imagine most of these will be Anglo-Saxon, not likely to crop up in the average day's conversation, and thus excellent for Scrabble. ("most" is too common, likewise "will" and even "crop", in an...
blet, quim, clit, buff, sire, wiki, blog, loam, waft, heft, mare, lilt and 68 more...
-
Potpourri
eponymous, aa, pulchritude, gizmo, macabre, sui generis, solecism, solipsism, eldritch, samizdat, queue, obsequious and 469 more...
-
work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
-
hildjj's Words
bookmarklet, demisemiquaver, zeitgeist, hermeneutics, oligarch, quisling, absinthe, mellifluent, verisimilitude, implacable, necrotic, nacreous and 243 more...
-
When In Entropic~al English Locales.....
Care about your social environment? Save these endangered words from extinction... don't delay, adopt an out~of~date adjective today!
englishable, toesmithing, zwimmer, woad, wherefore, bobance, pediluvium, ruff, anteloquy, februation, lungeous, chalm and 357 more...
-
Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
-
Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
-
Life is just a four-letter word
Everyone's got their favorites. Here are some of mine.
snit, hobo, minx, kiln, loll, pelf, yegg, ugly, bumf, brio, biro, haha and 92 more...
-
colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
-
Words that were new to me
but now they're not because I looked them up. In cases of polysemy or homography, *of course* it was the oddest meaning that stumped me. ;)
Procrustean bed, idem sonans, hob, backcap, quango, cheap-jack, pantechnicon, churrigueresco, chopfallen, maritorious, supererogation, catimini and 212 more...
-
List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
-
Hitch Words
Words from the lexicon of Christopher Hitchens
propinquity, fratricide, factitious, vitiate, sectarianism, ostensible, atavistic, sephardic, doyen, palpable, encephalitic, fastidious and 188 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pelf.
knitandpurl "Of course, he isn't literally a fishmonger (I don't believe he even likes fish), because this is a City Livery Company, and while the Fishmongers' retains more links with the trade than, say, the Goldsmiths' it is in essence a living fossil; a medieval guild, cemented to the Square Mile like an oyster, through which flows a great current of nutritious pelf."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 138 Oct 16, 2010
yarb I was dazzled by the gold and jewels which he laid out in burning row before me, and became a living monument in my own person, that miraculous transformations are effected by the power of pelf, as well as by the wand of love.
- Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 7 ch. 7 Sep 30, 2008
minerva For though your honour is kind to me in worldly pelf, yet what shall a man get to lose his soul, as holy scripture says, and please your honour?
Joseph Leman to Lovelace, Clarissa by Samuel Richardson Jan 4, 2008
yarb Curiouser, "matted pelf" is (or was, until now) a googlewhack. I now feel drawn by kismet towards the poet Gongora. Jan 4, 2008
yarb I suppose so. But my mistaken definition of pelf was concurrent with a correct understanding of pelt. For some reason the phrase "matted pelf" sticks in my mind. Jan 4, 2008
sarra That would be because of pelt. Jan 4, 2008
yarb For some reason I always thought this word meant animal hide or fur. Jan 4, 2008
chained_bear "A miser's mind thou hast
Thou has a prince's pelf
Which makes thee wealthy to thine heir--
A beggar to thyself."
--I forget, but I want to say "Shakespeare" Dec 28, 2007
grammar The ultimate question in the derivative suit, is whether a sentient and alert corporate Board of Directors...would conclude he is entitled to depart from its employ while claiming pelf approaching $800,000,000. Dec 28, 2007