You say purse, I say handbag...

You know I live in the US and I get confused too. Purse, handbag, pocketbook.... It seems different people apply different meanings.

For some odd reason I think of a pockets book as having a snap lock and a short handle, a handbag as having a shoulder strap and a purse as more of a clutch. I can give you no good reason for this:clueless:

Melody

 

Interesting discussion! Some of this might be regional even within the U.S. When I was younger, people my parents' and grandparents' ages would call them pocketbooks. When I was growing up, we called them purses. "Handbag" was rarely a term I heard, but I was, of course, familiar with it, though never used it. When I started selling vintage, I was thrown by the term "bag." I'd never heard that used in conjunction with a purse!

Like Jonathan, though, now I generically think of them all as purses, then a handbag is a bag with handles you can only carry with your hand or over your wrist, but not over your shoulder. Funny, but I tend to think of handbags as more of a smaller type, unstructured "bag," but a larger, more structured one as a pocketbook. Not sure where these connotations have come from! Probably because I associate large "day" purses with handles as being what older folks carried in the 50s & 60s, and called pocketbooks--like those big old tapestry ones with the feet on the bottom. Also because book connotes something hard sided, and bag, something soft sided. Then you have clutches--which I think of both as bags and purses.

When listing I always try to use both "purse" and "handbag" or "hand bag" in the titles, for all versions of them. Because you just don't know what someone else is going to call it! And a change purse is always to me a change purse or coin purse, never just a "purse."

Here's what I think of as a pocketbook; it's large (10" H x 12" W) and has structured sides:


A handbag, smaller and with soft sides:


A purse; this has a short-ish shoulder strap:

Nicole, what do you call the eggplant? An eggplant or an aubergine?

 

Anne, Australians call them eggplant but when I was living in the UK I picked up aubergine and it's such a lovely word....one of my favourites....I've stuck with it. Both are quite common in Australia so there's no confusion - unlike cantelope (UK), which are rockmelons here, and satsuma, which are what the Brits call mandarins but we here in Australia call plums. So many different names for the same thing!

Nicole

 

Ha! I use pocketbook - must be a New York/old timey thing? Or more like Chris says - "pockabook". I also say bag generically. To me a tote is a simple square sack with handles, like grocery totes. And I call a schoolbag a bookbag.

When selling I usually will use both terms - handbag and purse. In etsy I will use handbag, purse and bag as tags. Although I use pocketbook, I never actually use it while selling. It's like I subconsciencely knew it was "wrong". lol

Fascinating thread - I love the difference in regional speak.

 

Must be.... My mom, aunts, and grandmother are the folks I think of when I think of the older generation that said pocketbook, and we all lived in NYS, and my dad's family came from NYC after they immigrated from Italy. And it was Marie, I think, who said her Italian aunt (?) called them pocketbooks. So, maybe an Italian/NY thing?

 

It's an old school thing for sure. Where I live in Brooklyn, there are a lot of people who stay in the neighborhood for generations and so there are 15 year old girls who use that word. It's kinda comforting that small things don't change like that...

 

Yes, a New York thing. But not Italian. We all carried "pockabooks," (although we knew it was "pocketbook," regardless of ethnicity, religion, etc. We also say "bag" (as in "I left my bag in the taxi!").

p.s. the term pocketbook originated in the 17th century, to describe a small case women carried to hold a little notebook along with other necessities. it slipped into the wearer's pocket which, at the time, was a separate garment fixed around the waist with narrow ties. I think it was quite a while before garments had integrated pockets. But I have recently taken a lot of Benadryl and Sudafed...

I think it originally described the notebook itself, but came, through synecdoche (great word!) to describe the case.

 

I'm in Virginia and I still say billfold and always thought of a "purse" as a small little thing to carry coins...like change or coin purse. Pocketbook is more what I grew up hearing. We would say evening bag for the little pretty beaded bags carried for more dressy affairs.

 

I am from the UK but still use the word 'fanny pack'! My mother used to use it as a joke and now I have just got used to it and use it without thinking!

 

Ruth started this thread in 2010, but it was an interesting first read for me.