pelf
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: pelfs
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Money, riches; gain, especially when dishonestly acquired; lucre, mammon.
pos: noun
tags: dated
derogatory
uncountable
examples: 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.
For what greater folly can there be, or madneſſe, then to […] keepe backe from his wife and children, neither letting them, nor other friends uſe or enjoy that which is theirs by right, and which they much need perhaps; like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth onely keep it, becauſe it ſhall doe no body elſe good, hurting himſelfe and others; and for a little momentary pelfe, damne his owne ſoule.
During his Office, Treaſon vvas no Crime. / The Sons of Belial had a Glorious Time: / For Shimei, though not prodigal of pelf, / Yet lov'd his vvicked Neighbour as himſelf.
The inscriptions on the walls are homilies from the Koran—actual 'sermons in stones'. The inlaid characters in diamond, and other precious stones, have been all abstracted away by the pelf-loving Jaut and Mahratta—leaving the walls defaced with the hollow marks of the chisel.
But, sighing after his fancies and visionary pursuits, he rebelled and fled fifty miles away for refuge from the lace caps and powdered wigs of his priggish sitters, and resumed his quaint dreams and immeasurable phantasies, never more to forsake them for pelf and portraiture.
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf, and the world makes you King for a day, / Then go to the mirror and look at yourself, and see what that guy has to say.
Some of the rich classmates were keeping their pelf to themselves.
In advertising, show business, and journalism, people work themselves to the nub for glitz and glory more than for pelf.
She writes about those she might have known first-hand: teenage girls cowering in bunkers … friends making promises they can never keep … rich folk fattened on wartime pelf, poor folk surviving by wit alone.
Every wised-up wit who mistakes knowingness for knowledge proclaims that Peter Mandelson is a gutless fixer; a master manipulator who will twist and dodge around the clock to keep the privileges of power and pelf. […] If only the idle stereotype were true.
Houellebecq seems to be saying that French society, in the form of its politicians, its journalists, its academics and not least its novelists, will get exactly what it deserves – a state run by those who believe in something bigger and grander than the pelf and perquisites of their elevated positions.
gloss: Rubbish, trash; specifically (UK, dialectal) refuse from plants.
pos: noun
tags: dated
uncountable
examples: 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.
gloss: Dust; fluff.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
gloss: A contemptible or useless person.
pos: noun
tags: Yorkshire
countable
derogatory
Related words: pilfer
Derived words: pelfish
pelfray
pelfry
Translations: