trouser
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɹaʊzə/
enpr: trouʹzər
ipa: /ˈtɹaʊzɚ/
rhymes: -aʊzə(ɹ)
Forms: form: trousers
form: trousering
form: trousered
form: trousered
Etymology: Back-formation from trousers.
Senses: glosses: To put (money) into one's trouser pocket; to pocket.
examples: text: Your aunt told him to pack Upjohn's bags, and the first thing he saw when he smacked into it was the speech. He trousered it and brought it along to me.
ref: 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XIX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
text: Barr, 34, trousered the money from the pub in Lugton, Ayrshire, between January 2016 and February 2018.
ref: 2021 September 7, “Greedy pub worker’s assets targeted after he’s convicted of £40,000 embezzlement: Graham Barr trousered over £35,000 while working at the Canny Man in Lugton”, in Daily Record:
glosses: To secretively steal (an item or money) for personal use.
examples: text: Politicians know how to look after themselves. Derry Irvine, Blair’s old boss, trousered a pension fund worth £2.3 million after just five years as Lord Chancellor - all courtesy of the tax payer.
ref: 2010, Richard Littlejohn, Littlejohn’s Britain, page 348:
ref: 2021 July 14, “Towns trouser cash as billions earmarked for ‘levelling up’ in U.K.”, in The Guardian:
text: Andy Prendergast, national secretary of the GMB union, said: “To see the boss of Shell trouser more than £6million while bills are crippling families and countries scrabble around trying to ditch Russian gas is abhorrent.
ref: 2022 March 10, “Shell boss earns £6.3million in a year as households and motorists face cost of living crisis”, in Mirror:
text: The founder and boss of CMC Markets is set to trouser £20million via the company’s dividend payments, even as the group’s profits and revenue fall.
ref: 2022 June 9, “CMC Market boss and House of Lords member Peter Cruddas set for bumper dividend as trading platform’s profits and revenue slide”, in thisismoney.co.uk:
text: Worse still, the driving motivation for all too many of the bosses of water companies appears to be not to improve the environment or to secure London’s water supply but rather to trouser obscene salaries and bonuses
ref: 2022 July 4, Feargal Sharkey, “Our taps could run dry and greedy bosses should be prosecuted, writes FEARGAL SHARKEY”, in Daily Mail:
text: The whopping sum will now be up for grabs on Tuesday when punters will have another chance to trouser the lifechanging amount.
ref: 2022 July 17, “LUCKY NUMBERS Euromillions - £191million jackpot rolls over AGAIN with whopping cash prize up for grabs on Tuesday”, in The Sun:
text: A small piece of the Stone of Destiny broke off during the operation at Westminster Abbey — and Ian's son, Jamie Hamilton, still has it. / "My father had the presence of mind to trouser it and got it set in a brooch, and gave the brooch to my mother," Jamie says.
ref: 2022 November 7, Marc Fennell, Rosanna Ryan, “When England invaded Scotland, the Stone of Destiny was stolen. Centuries later, four Scots stole it back”, in Australian Broadcasting C RN:
text: As an example, in the final three months of 2022 (usually a fallow period for airlines), Ryanair trousered a comfortable £222 million in profits - essentially £2m per day.
ref: 2023 April 19, Christian Wolmar, “We need a cross-party transport policy that supports net zero”, in RAIL, number 981, page 34:
glosses: To take and keep (something, especially money, that is not one's own); to pocket.