Other forms: wallets
A wallet is the small flat folding case you keep in a pocket for cards and notes. Yours has a bank card in it, a stamp, a receipt from March and a photograph you had forgotten was in there.
In Britain a wallet is the folding one and a purse is for coins; in America a wallet covers both and a purse is the handbag itself. The word does most of its work around money — a hit to the wallet, out of my own wallet, and a fat wallet meaning a rich owner. A digital wallet now holds the same cards inside a phone, and a wallet is also the stiff paper folder your tickets or photographs come back in.
1nounwalletA small flat folding case for banknotes and cards, carried in a pocket.~24%
“He pulled a card out of his wallet.”
2nounpapersA flat folder for holding papers, tickets or photographs.~5%
“The tickets arrived in a cardboard wallet.”
3nounappAn app holding your cards and money on a phone.~71%
“Everything went into the digital wallet and the leather one stayed at home.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 76 sentences found in the wild and placed 62 of them on a sense (14 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Middle English walet meant a bag, a knapsack — the thing a traveller carried slung over one shoulder. Where it came from before that has never been settled; one suggestion is a Germanic root meaning to roll, which would put it in the same family as walk and wallow. The bag has since shrunk to fit a pocket, and it still carries what you set out with.
Proto-Germanic
*wal- — to roll
fro-nor
*walet — a roll; bag; a knapsack
Middle English
walet — a bag, knapsack
English, today
wallet
From Middle English walet (“a bag, knapsack”), of uncertain origin. Possibly from an assumed fro-nor walet (“a roll; bag; a knapsack”), from Proto-Germanic wal- (“to roll”). More at walk, well, wallow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA