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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pelf.

Money, riches; gain, especially when dishonestly acquired; lucre, mammon.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɛlf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. Money, riches; gain, especially when dishonestly acquired; lucre, mammon.

    dated · derogatory · uncountable
  2. Rubbish, trash; specifically (UK, dialectal) refuse from plants.

    dated · uncountable
  3. Dust; fluff.

    uncountable
  4. A contemptible or useless person.

    Yorkshire · countable · derogatory
Where this word comes from

From Late Middle English pelf, pelfe (“stolen goods, booty, spoil; forfeited property; money, riches; property; valuable object”), possibly from Anglo-Norman pelf (a variant of pelfre (“booty, loot”)) and Old French peufre (“frippery; rubbish”); further etymology uncertain, possibly a metathesis of Old French felpe, ferpe, frepe (“a rag”). The English word is perhaps related to Late Latin pelfa, pelfra, pelfrum (“forfeited or stolen goods”), Middle French peuffe and French peufe, peuffe (“old clothes; rubbish”) (Normandy), and pilfer.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.