Etymograph

English

purse

Purse comes from Middle English purs ‘bag, sack, pouch’, and goes back to Proto-Germanic *pusô.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*pusô1‘bag, wallet, scrip’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*pusō1reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150pusa2‘wallet, bag, scrip’
  4. Old Englishc. 450–1150purs2
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500purs2‘bag, sack, pouch’
  6. Englishearliest quotation 1550purse2

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, Old English pusa
  2. 2 Wiktionary, English purse
  3. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1550, Steuen Mierdman: “And then muſt many a man occupie as farre…”.

Earlier history uncertain. See Wiktionary.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*pusôWiktionary, Old English pusa‘bag, wallet, scrip’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*pusōWiktionary, Old English pusareconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150pusaWiktionary, English purse‘wallet, bag, scrip’
  4. Old Englishc. 450–1150pursWiktionary, English purse
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500pursWiktionary, English purse‘bag, sack, pouch’
  6. Englishearliest quotation 1550purseWiktionary, English purse. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1550, Steuen Mierdman: “And then muſt many a man occupie as farre…”

The story

Old English pusa comes from Proto-West Germanic *pusō, from Proto-Germanic *pusô (‘bag, sack, scrip’), and is cognate with Old High German pfoso (‘pouch, purse’), Low German pūse (‘purse, bag’), Old Norse posi (‘purse, bag’), Danish pose (‘purse, bag’). Old English burse comes from Medieval Latin bursa (‘leather bag’) (compare English bursar), from Ancient Greek βύρσα (búrsa, “hide, wine-skin”).

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Linked words

through Proto-Indo-European *bew-

bill, pick, bowl, pocket, bulletin, pose, buckle, pique, pout, bouillon, picot, bulla, pock, 17 more

Today it means

noun A small bag for carrying money.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “purse”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Old English pusa. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Germanic *pusô / purse

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