Word.ws English Dictionary

power of the purse

power of the purse noun: the control of finances by one group used as a check on the power of another group.

Noun

power of the purse (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) The control of finances by one group used as a check on the power of another group.
    • Congress has the power of the purse and can choose not to pay for a Presidential policy with which they disagree.

Questions about power of the purse

What does power of the purse mean?
Power of the purse means the control of finances by one group used as a check on the power of another group.
What part of speech is power of the purse?
Power of the purse is a noun.

Words near power of the purse in the dictionary

  1. power of appointment
  2. power of attorney
  3. power of suggestion
  4. power of termination
  5. power of the pencil
  6. power of the purse
  7. power of yet
  8. power off
  9. power on
  10. power outage
  11. power outages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: power of the purse (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-power of the purse.ogg.

Cite this entry: “power of the purse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/power_of_the_purse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.