Great-grandmother: pocketbook (reportedly) 74-76Īn informal survey of five female family members (lifelong New Englanders) shows there may be some generational shift after all: Purse and Its Synonyms, American Speech, Vol. In the second, for Elizabeth Bright's Word Geography of California and Nevada, she shows only 16 percent of respondents used the term pocketbook. In one done for the Linguistic Atlas of New England, she notes a size distinction between purse and pocketbook with the former being considered a "small pouch or similar container for coins or other money," and the latter a "larger receptacle used to contain paper money as well as other articles," including a purse. Schneidemesser cites two other surveys in her piece. This last point seems to rule out any significant generational differences among pocketbook respondents-30 years ago, that is. Purse but farther west, it becomes sparser. Purse, pocketbook, and handbag are all standard terms reported from She then analyzes responses given from a 1000-person sample of Americans to the question, " What do you keep money in when you carry it around with you?", posed in a survey done for the Dictionary of American Regional English.Īfter a discussion of the distribution of wallet and billfold, she addresses purse, pocketbook, and handbag: The OED shows that by 1685 it was understood also to be a "book for notes, memoranda, etc., intended to be carried in the pocket a notebook also, a book-like case of leather or the like, having compartments for papers, bank-notes, bills, etc." In the last meaning the DAE attests its use in the United States since 1816. Pocketbook was originally just that: a small book that could be carried in the pocket. Her etymology of pocketbook mirrors answers given here already: The article is dated, but addresses part of your question directly. From a blog entry at Separated by a Common Language, I learned that Luanne von Schneidemesser wrote about the word purse and its synonyms in a 1980 piece for American Speech.
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