Meaning
A small container, traditionally pig-shaped, with a slot for dropping in coins; by extension, any modest store of personal savings built up bit by bit. The word covers both the physical object children save their pocket change in and, figuratively, a small cash reserve set aside for a specific purpose. Neutral, often nostalgic register; strongly associated with children learning to save. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The popular story that the name came from cheap orange 'pygg' clay jars in medieval England, later made pig-shaped as a pun, is folk etymology: Michael Quinion traced it to Charles Panati's 1989 trivia book, found no record of any clay called pygg, and no 'pygg bank' has ever been documented. What is documented is different: pig-shaped money boxes existed early in Java (12th-14th century 'celengan', boar-shaped coin pots) and Germany (a 13th-century find), while English 'pig' had meant an earthenware pot in Scotland and northern England from about 1450 - Scots called coin pots 'pirly pigs', probably from 'pyrl', to thrust or poke a coin in. The modern word is American and only about a century old: 'pig bank' appears in US newspapers from 1900 (the OED's earliest citation is 1902), and 'piggy bank' from 1913. Wikipedia states plainly that there is no clear origin for the term, so the pig shape itself remains genuinely unexplained.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- money pig
- pig bank
- piggie bank
- piggy
Usage Examples
- She fed every loose coin from her pockets into the piggy bank, and by December there was enough for a train ticket.
- Our equipment-replacement fund is basically a departmental piggy bank that gets raided whenever a laptop dies.
- Instead of a piggy bank for the grandchildren, he transfers five pounds a month into an account they will discover when they turn eighteen.