Word.ws English Dictionary

pork-barrel

pork-barrel is the alternative spelling of pork barrel.

Meaning of pork barrel

Noun

pork barrel (plural pork barrels)

  1. (archaic) A barrel used to store pork.
  2. (US) A ready supply of income; one's livelihood.
  3. (US, attributive, often) State funds as assigned for local or regional expenditure; especially, central money used for regional projects which are eyecatching or designed to appeal to voters.
    • As the President said in his veto message, "It should also come as no surprise that over time the program has attained distinct flavor of pork barrel."1973 April 10, James T. Lynn, “Pork-Barrel Waste”, in The New York Times

Forms of pork-barrel

pluralpork-barrels

Questions about pork-barrel

What is pork-barrel the alternative spelling of?
Pork-barrel is the alternative spelling of pork barrel.

Words near pork-barrel in the dictionary

  1. pork tapeworm
  2. pork tapeworms
  3. pork up
  4. pork Wellington
  5. pork Wellingtons
  6. pork-barrel
  7. pork-barreling
  8. pork-barrelling
  9. pork-barrels
  10. pork-cat syndrome
  11. pork-chop island

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pork-barrel (page history and authors); pork barrel (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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Cite this entry: “pork-barrel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pork-barrel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.