Pelf
noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Money, riches; gain, especially when dishonestly acquired; lucre, mammon. dated, derogatory, uncountable
"Raph. Sirra Hammon Hammon, dost thou thinke a shooe-maker is so base, to be a bawd to his own wife for cõmodity! take thy gold, choake with it: were I not lame, I would make thee eate thy words. Firke. A shoomaker sell his flesh and blood, oh indignitie! Hodg. Sirra, take up your pelfe, and be packing."
- 2 informal terms for money wordnet
- 3 Rubbish, trash; specifically (British, dialectal) refuse from plants. dated, uncountable
"Now for women, in ſtead of laborious ſtudies, they have curious, needleworkes, Cut-workes, ſpinning, bone-lace, and many prettie deviſes of their owne making, to adorne their houſes, […] Which to her gueſts ſhe ſhews, with all her pelfe, / Thus far my maides, but this I did my ſelf."
- 4 Dust; fluff. uncountable
- 5 A contemptible or useless person. Yorkshire, countable, derogatory
Example
More examples""Thus roused, her friends she gathers. All await / her summons, who the tyrant fear or hate. / Some ships at hand, chance-anchored in the bay / they seize and load them with the costly freight, / and far off o'er the deep is borne away / Pygmalion's hoarded pelf. A woman leads the way.""
Etymology
From Late Middle English pelf, pelfe (“stolen goods, booty, spoil; forfeited property; money, riches; property; valuable object”), possibly from Anglo-Norman pelf (a variant of pelfre (“booty, loot”)) and Old French peufre (“frippery; rubbish”); further etymology uncertain, possibly a metathesis of Old French felpe, ferpe, frepe (“a rag”). The English word is perhaps related to Late Latin pelfa, pelfra, pelfrum (“forfeited or stolen goods”), Middle French peuffe and French peufe, peuffe (“old clothes; rubbish”) (Normandy), and pilfer.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.