Meaning
A small sum of money for minor, day-to-day expenses. In British, Irish, and Commonwealth usage it chiefly means the small regular allowance given to children; the American equivalents are 'allowance' for a child's money and 'spending money' for incidental travel cash. Everyday, slightly old-fashioned warmth in British English; its smallness is built in - never used of serious sums. Regional use: British English (also Irish, Australian, New Zealand); 'allowance' in American English.
Origin
The phrase is literal: it names the small stock of coins a person keeps in the pocket for trivial purchases, as opposed to household funds or savings. The OED's earliest evidence is from 1625, in the writing of the English cleric and travel writer Samuel Purchas, and Etymonline attests 'pocket-money' in the 1630s as 'money for occasional or trivial purposes', part of a wave of pocket- compounds in which the prefix implies a small, portable version of something. The word pocket itself had denoted a small bag worn on the person, typically sewn into clothing, since the early 15th century. Over the 19th and 20th centuries the British sense narrowed toward a child's allowance, the sense that dominates today. The anchor's suggestion of an 18th-century origin is wrong: the phrase is 17th-century, documented from 1625.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a bit of pocket money
- spending money
- weekly pocket money
Usage Examples
- She saves most of her pocket money, but blows a little of it on second-hand paperbacks.
- The job paid nothing like a salary - travel and pocket money, really.
- In those days my pocket money was a coin a week, and comics cost half of it.