Purse

How to spell purse

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce purse

What does purse mean?

1. nounA small pouch or bag used to carry money and personal items.
2. verbTo draw the lips together into a tight, wrinkled shape.

Purse in a sentence

• noun

  She dropped a few coins into her leather purse.

• verb

  She would purse her lips whenever she disapproved of the plan.

• noun

  The pickpocket lifted a purse from the crowded train.

• verb

  The judges tend to purse their mouths before delivering bad news.

Where does purse come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek byrsa, meaning 'hide' or 'leather', the material from which money bags were originally made. Latin borrowed it as bursa, and Old English took it on as purs, a small pouch tied or drawn shut to hold coins. The b sound softened to p somewhere along this Germanic route, which is why English now has 'purse' while the Latin form survives unchanged in cousins like 'bursar' (the officer who keeps the funds) and 'disburse' and 'reimburse' (to pay money out and to pay it back). The verb sense, to draw the lips together into a tight pucker, grew naturally from the image of a drawstring purse being pulled closed; it appears in English by the 1600s. Knowing the bursa root helps fix the simple s spelling, since there is no double letter and no hidden c.

How the word is built

• purse (from Late Latin bursa: leather bag, hide); single root noun, also used as a verb