nounA small pouch sewn into or attached to clothing or a bag for carrying small items.
How to spell pocket
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce pocket
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does pocket mean?
- nounA small pouch sewn into or attached to clothing or a bag for carrying small items.
- verbTo put something into a pocket, or to keep money or gains for oneself, sometimes dishonestly.
Pocket in a sentence
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noun
He kept his keys in his coat pocket during the walk home.
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verb
The manager tried to pocket the difference from the cash takings.
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noun
The jacket had a hidden pocket for storing a passport.
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verb
He would quietly pocket his change without counting it.
Where does pocket come from?
Language of origin: French
The word comes from Anglo-Norman French pokete or poket, a diminutive of poke, meaning a bag or small sack, so a pocket was literally a 'little bag'. That poke in turn traces back to a Germanic word for a pouch, a relative of the same family that gives us 'poke' in the phrase 'a pig in a poke', meaning a sack you buy unseen. English adopted the word in the late Middle Ages, at first for a small pouch or bag carried or attached to clothing, and only later for the sewn-in pouches of modern garments. The diminutive ending -et, common in words borrowed from French such as 'packet' and 'ticket', is why the spelling keeps that single t before the final e is dropped. The link between poke the bag and pocket the little bag is a tidy way to remember the doubled k sound and the -et ending.
How the word is built
- pock- (from poke: bag or pouch)
- -et (diminutive suffix: little)
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