Just wondering ("billfold" vs. "wallet")

[Michael H Covarrubias]

'Billfold' is still dotting the map in the Northern Plains.  I regularly tease
my wife (in her mid twenties, from central Minnesota) for calling my wallet a
billfold.  Tho I'm her elder (in my thirties) to me, 'billfold' sounds more
antiquated and more indicative of a larger wallet, much like a pocketbook (but
not yet a purse).

Quoting Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>:

>
> I was going to say that "billfold" is still the term of choice in BE,
> until I recalled that my vocabulary is about three-quarters of a
> century old.
>
> -Wilson
>
> > On 1/3/07, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From time to time during the past
> > decade or two, younger friends and
> > kinsmen have derided me for using the
> > word "billfold" for what they call a
> > "wallet."
> >
> > I had never bothered to wonder
> > whether my usage was deemed risable on
> > account of its Southernness or
> > rusticity or old-fashionedness.
> >
> > DARE defines "billfold" as "a
> > pocketbook [sic!] to carry folded money; a
> > wallet," noting that the word is
> > "widespread, but least freq in NEast,
> > Pacific." A very dotty map follows.
> >
> > May I plausibly suspect that
> > "billfold" is coming to be considered
> > archaic--used least freq by the young and hep?
> >
> > --Charlie


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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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