Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small bag often closing with a drawstring and used especially for carrying loose items in one's pocket.
  • noun A bag or sack used to carry mail or diplomatic dispatches.
  • noun A leather bag or case for carrying powder or small-arms ammunition.
  • noun A sealed plastic or foil container used for packaging food or drink.
  • noun Something resembling a bag in shape.
  • noun Zoology A saclike structure, such as the cheek pockets of the gopher or the external abdominal pocket in which marsupials carry their young.
  • noun Anatomy A pocketlike space in the body.
  • noun Scots A pocket.
  • noun Archaic A small purse for coins.
  • intransitive verb To place in or as if in a pouch; pocket.
  • intransitive verb To cause to resemble a pouch.
  • intransitive verb To swallow. Used of certain birds or fishes.
  • intransitive verb To assume the form of a pouch or pouchlike cavity.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To pocket; put into a pouch or pocket; inclose as in a pouch or sack.
  • To swallow, as a bird or fish.
  • To pocket; submit quietly to.
  • To fill the pockets of; provide with money.
  • To purse up.
  • To form a pouch; bag.
  • noun A bag or sack of any sort; especially, a poke or pocket, or something answering the same purpose, as the bag carried at the girdle in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and serving as a purse to carry small articles.
  • noun A mail-pouch. See mail-bag.
  • noun In zoology, a dilated or sac-like part, capable of containing something.
  • noun In botany, a silicle; also, some other purselike vessel, as the sac at the base of some petals.
  • noun In anatomy, a cæcum, especially when dilated or saccular, or some similar sac or recess. See cut under lamprey.
  • noun A bag for shot or bullets; hence, after the introduction of cartridges, a cartridge-box.
  • noun A small bulkhead or partition in a ship's hold to prevent grain or other loose cargo from shifting.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To put or take into a pouch.
  • transitive verb To swallow; -- said of fowls.
  • transitive verb obsolete To pout.
  • transitive verb rare To pocket; to put up with.
  • noun A small bag; usually, a leathern bag
  • noun That which is shaped like, or used as, a pouch.
  • noun A protuberant belly; a paunch; -- so called in ridicule.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A sac or bag for carrying food or young.
  • noun (Med.) A cyst or sac containing fluid.
  • noun (Bot.) A silicle, or short pod, as of the shepherd's purse.
  • noun A bulkhead in the hold of a vessel, to prevent grain, etc., from shifting.
  • noun a mouth with blubbered or swollen lips.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small bag usually closed with a drawstring
  • noun A pocket in which a marsupial carries its young
  • noun Any pocket or bag shaped object; as, a cheek pouch
  • verb transitive To enclose within a pouch.
  • verb transitive To transport within a pouch, especially a diplomatic pouch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb put into a small bag
  • verb swell or protrude outwards
  • noun an enclosed space
  • noun (anatomy) saclike structure in any of various animals (as a marsupial or gopher or pelican)
  • verb send by special mail that goes through diplomatic channels
  • noun a small or medium size container for holding or carrying things

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, of Germanic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Northern French pouche, borrowed from Old French poche, puche (whence French poche; compare also the Anglo-Norman variant poke), of Germanic origin: from Old Low Franconian *poka (“pouch”) (compare Middle Dutch poke, Old English pocca, dialectal German Pfoch) or Frankish. Compare pocket, poke.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pouch.

Examples

  • The end of a metaphysical debate timprov: So if you make something that's half muffin and half kangaroo, but then you only frost it inside the pouch, is it a muffin or a cupcake?

    mrissa: The end of a metaphysical debate mrissa 2010

  • The end of a metaphysical debate timprov: So if you make something that's half muffin and half kangaroo, but then you only frost it inside the pouch, is it a muffin or a cupcake?

    Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway timprov 2010

  • While Europeans are experimenting with milk in pouch style packaging, Walmart's discount club store Sam's Club is switching its gallon milk packaging to a square case-less jug.

    11 posts from July 2008 2008

  • Method's refill pouch is now widely available across the country and according to Method's Katie Molinari will be expanding into other forms of their liquid soaps by March.

    Method Refill Pouch Packaging Expanding 2008

  • Method's refill pouch is now widely available across the country and according to Method's Katie Molinari will be expanding into other forms of their liquid soaps by March.

    19 posts from January 2008 2008

  • She wore a small buckskin pouch like a locket on neck with the Thoreau newspaper scrap in it and told Trefethan she wished the Thoreau man would happen along so she could marry him.

    “Samuel! There was a rolling wonder in the sound. Ay, there was!” 2008

  • Wrapping a lap band around a gastric pouch is an operation that makes no sense and they have just multiplied the problems of a gastric bypass by the problems of the band for limited if any benifit.

    Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes » Blog Archive » LABG to Salvage Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass 2008

  • So, I went tromping out to get some weather features and test a new camera rain pouch (it's a Pelican collapsible rain pouch and soft-sided blimp - two thumbs up).

    Archive 2007-01-01 2007

  • A group of four hospitals, led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, are starting a large-scale study this spring examining how children respond to various types of weight-loss surgery, including the gastric bypass, in which a pouch is stapled off from the rest of the stomach and connected to the small intestine.

    More U.S. kids having obesity surgery 2007

  • So, I went tromping out to get some weather features and test a new camera rain pouch (it's a Pelican collapsible rain pouch and soft-sided blimp - two thumbs up).

    Do we run pretty pictures? 2007

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • In heraldry, the Pilgrim's scrip, often associated with a staff or bourdon.

    October 2, 2011