Why do Americans call purses "pocketbooks"?

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

Mid-50s and have never heard anyone call a normal shirt a blouse. A ladies' top, yes.

As for pocketbooks, that may be a regional usage. I never heard anyone, young or old, calling it that in West Texas. Or anyplace else I ever lived in the US (Southwest and Hawaii).

Originally Posted by tdn

This is new information to me. I hear blouse all the time. I guess this area didn't get the memo back in 1942. I also hear bag and handbag a lot. In fact, and we're going back some 30 years here, I had a friend who got absolutely incensed that someone called her bag a purse. Oh, the social cluelessness! Didn't the social misfit know the difference?

Originally Posted by Acsenray

You hear men's shirts being called blouses all the time? The outdated usage I think is being described is that any loose-fitting top, even when worn by a man, could be a "blouse."

Originally Posted by tdn

I was unaware that we were talking about men's clothing. In fact I searched for the word in the entire thread and there was not one reference to men's shirts. Was that the assumption?

I just e-mailed a female friend and asked her what a woman's shirt is called, and she used a few terms including blouse. And I'm pretty sure she's not over 80.

Originally Posted by Balance

Well, the line you quoted from Siam Sam included "A ladies' top, yes." That is, ladies' tops are often commonly called blouses but other shirts (presumably men's shirts and unisex shirts) are not.

I fear I did not make myself clear. Yes, I have always heard ladies' tops or "shirts" called "blouses." Always. I have never ever, not even once in my life that I can recall, heard a man's shirt referred to as a "blouse." That practice, from what I can tell, died out along with 18th-century highwaymen.

Now, how about "wallet" versus "billfold"? I think there may have already been a thread on that. But I do believe I heard both while growing up, but "wallet" definitely the majority of times.

[sahirrnee]

For me purse and pocketbook are the same thing. I have seldom heard handbag, it's the same thing except I think of handbags as being the larger type of purse or pocketbook.
A wallet holds money, credit cards, pictures, etc. and is carried in the purse, pocketbook or handbag.

For men a wallet is what is carried in the back pocket and holds money, pictures, credit cards, little slips of paper with phone numbers, etc. A billfold is a thinner wallet that carries only money. A money clip is made of metal and holds folded bills.

A little black book is where a man compiles all those little slips of paper with phone numbers, usually in alphabetical order by first name. Sometimes there are star ratings. Sometimes the little black book would fit in the wallet right next to the condom, sometimes not.

A blouse is a womans dressy shirt. It is made of a thinner material and should have a collar and buttons, possibly lace or frills.

[Dr. Girlfriend]

My Granny is from small-town Amish country Indiana, and she's always called her purse a pocketbook. She also calls a couch a davenport, for what it's worth.

[missred]

Originally Posted by Dr. Girlfriend

My Granny is from small-town Amish country Indiana, and she's always called her purse a pocketbook. She also calls a couch a davenport, for what it's worth.

Great Og! Are you my cousin?

I grew up where your granny did, with a hillbilly mother and a father with both PA Dutch and Polish roots. My dad (like his mother before him) uses pocketbook and davenport. My mom uses pocketbook and sofa. Both use billfold for the thing a man carries his cash / plastic in.

Me? I've lived quite a few years of my adult life in the midsouth and tend to use pocketbook more than purse.

[zweisamkeit]

Originally Posted by tdn

I was unaware that we were talking about men's clothing. In fact I searched for the word in the entire thread and there was not one reference to men's shirts. Was that the assumption?

SiamSam apparently did, though he phrased it in a way that mildly grinds my gears (but let me stress I don't believe he intended to or anything). Apparently men's shirts are "normal" shirts, and women's ladies' shirts are abnormal ladies'.

Men's = Normal
Women's = Women's

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by zweisamkeit

SiamSam apparently did, though he phrased it in a way that mildly grinds my gears (but let me stress I don't believe he intended to or anything). Apparently men's shirts are "normal" shirts, and women's ladies' shirts are abnormal ladies'.

Men's = Normal
Women's = Women's

If that's all you have to worry about, then you're doing pretty good.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Why do Americans call leather pocket money envelopes "wallets"? They don't go on a wall.

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

Why do Americans call leather pocket money envelopes "wallets"? They don't go on a wall.

Not even remotely parallel. "Pocketbook" is clearly a compound of the common words "pocket" and "book." "Wallet" has no etymological connection to "wall." You're suggesting that no one should ever be curious about the origins of a particular usage, which would be a surprise to any linguist.

[thelurkinghorror]

Originally Posted by zweisamkeit

SiamSam apparently did, though he phrased it in a way that mildly grinds my gears (but let me stress I don't believe he intended to or anything). Apparently men's shirts are "normal" shirts, and women's ladies' shirts are abnormal ladies'.

Men's = Normal
Women's = Women's

Yeah, but a size is "normal" if it is sized in inches or cm, and not normal if it has some arbitrary number or anme.

Originally Posted by Acsenray

Not even remotely parallel. "Pocketbook" is clearly a compound of the common words "pocket" and "book." "Wallet" has no etymological connection to "wall." You're suggesting that no one should ever be curious about the origins of a particular usage, which would be a surprise to any linguist.

Why do they call it "woosh"? It's not like you have to scream "woo" when it happens. And what's the deal with airline food?

[Eliahna]

I read about pocketbooks in Sweet Valley High in my tweens (before that word existed), and tentatively theorised that it meant day planner. Then they started puling stuff other than money in and out of it and I wondered how they fit their lipstick (etc.) in there. Day planner... It's sort of pockety, and book-like.

Personally, I keep my money and credit cards in my purse, which I carry along with a metric ton of accumulated junk in my handbag. I noticed on Google image search that if you enter purse, you get images of handbags, but if you add "site:au" (no quotes), you get coin purses, which has made me reflect that what I call my purse is actually a ladies wallet.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

Why do Americans call leather pocket money envelopes "wallets"? They don't go on a wall.

It's the big fat ass of the average American. Big as a wall.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by Ellen Cherry

I love to use the word pocketbook. I associate it with my small-town upbringing. It's true it's not much used, but if you do use it, everyone knows what you're talking about.

"Honey, grab me my pocketbook; I want to get my Nabs from this morning at the drugstore. Oh and a fresh pack of cigarettes."

The word pocketbook always makes me think of Lionel Barrymore in Grand Hotel; having been told he his terminally ill he has cashed out his life savings and is carrying it around with him in his "pocketbook", which he then proceeds to lose (or have stolen--I don't remember for sure).

Today, pocketbook is one of those quaint words which are still much more current in figurative allusions, e.g. "In this campaign season pocketbook issues have resonated strongly with the voters." This is a bit similar to the word budget, which originally meant a little bag in which you might set some money aside, but now has a similar figurative meaning.

See also carfare, originally meaning what it cost to ride the streetcar, but still used today to mean the cost to ride the bus, metro, or whatever.

[Zjestika]

I first saw pocketbook in Nancy Drew books too and I remember imagining the cutest little kind of hollowed-out book wallet thing. She sure did wear a lot of lipstick, that Nancy.

[BigT]

I've actually heard the little billfold thing that you guys are calling a pocketbook being described as a purse, as in "Get my purse out of my purse."

I have not heard the word pocketbook used in a long time--only amongst the genteel of my grandparents generation. I have read it, though.

[flodnak]

"Pocketbook" is still in use some places in the Midatlantic states.

[matt_mcl]

It occurs to me that I don't think I've really ever heard anyone mention their pocketbook in conversation, except the metaphorical meaning ("pocketbook issues," "hit someone hard in the pocketbook").

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by Colophon

Now I'm confused. I thought "handbag" was confined to Britain, and that Americans call them "purses"? Certainly in American films, women always seem to refer to what I'd call a handbag as a "purse".

It might have been a regional or generational thing, but one of my grandmothers, born in SLC in the 1880s, always referred to it as simply a "bag". My other grandmother from Illinois never used that term.

Soylent Juicy: From the other side of the water it now amuses me to think that for a long time, I didn't realize that, in the UK, "fruit machines" were what we call 'slot machines'. Seriously. In my public middle and high schools of the 1970s, we actually had vending machines on campus that sold--fruit. That's what I thought a fruit machine was.

[Leiko]

For myself- female, mid-20's, grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went to college in Montana- I think of "pocketbook" as one of those baffling words that books and old people insist are relevant but never factor into my life, right up there with "slacks" or "house coat." Even though I know what people mean by pocketbook, my mental image is more like a day-planner, like Eliahna above.

In a weird note of synchronicity, I was just thinking yesterday at work how only customers from the South and New Jersey/New York area customers seem to mention their pocketbook when I ask them if they've got their payment information handy so we can get their cell phone bill taken care of. (I work at a customer service call center for a nationwide wireless provider.) Pretty much everyone else say it's in the purse if they need to get it out of a bag-type object.

In my own vernacular, one goes shopping for purses but yells "where the heck did I put my bag?" when the purse ends up in a non-standard place.