wallet

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small flat case, often made of leather, for carrying money and cards in your pocket.

   The thief stole all the cash from the old man's wallet.

2. 2
   noun

   A digital application for storing money or payment cards electronically.

   She paid for the coffee using the wallet on her phone.

Simplified etymology

Wallet comes from Old French and is possibly of Germanic origin. It originally meant a bag, pouch, or knapsack; its earliest recorded use is in Chaucer’s prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and its modern meaning first appeared in the United States in the 1840s.

From Middle English walet (“a bag, knapsack”), of uncertain origin. Possibly from an assumed Old Northern French *walet (“a roll; bag; a knapsack”), from Proto-Germanic *wal- (“to roll”). More at walk, well, wallow.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary