Word.ws English Dictionary

line one's pockets

line one's pockets verb: to accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner.

Verb

line one's pockets (third-person singular simple present lines one's pockets, present participle lining one's pockets, simple past and past participle lined one's pockets)

  1. (idiomatic) To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner.
    • The men who have lined their pockets with public plunder and made the Municipal Government a nest of thieves—will any one in his sober senses believe that in all these men did they were doing more than struggling for a continuance of their own power?1873 June 19, “Philadelphia's Rings”, in New York Times, retrieved 28 Feb 2009, page 1
    • And now, after lining his pockets with other people's money, he kidnaps a white girl belonging to an orchestra.1915, Joseph Conrad, chapter 7, in Victory: An Island Tale

Synonyms of line one's pockets

Forms of line one's pockets

third-person singular presentlines one's pockets
present participlelining one's pockets
past participlelined one's pockets
pastlined one's pockets

Questions about line one's pockets

What does line one's pockets mean?
Line one's pockets means to accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner.
What part of speech is line one's pockets?
Line one's pockets is a verb.
What is the past tense of line one's pockets?
The past tense of line one's pockets is lined one's pockets.

Words near line one's pockets in the dictionary

  1. line of thought
  2. line of work
  3. line off
  4. line officer
  5. line officers
  6. line one's pockets
  7. line out
  8. line outs
  9. line plot
  10. line plots
  11. line printer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: line one's pockets (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-line one's pockets.ogg.

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