Miscellaneous Definitions — accessories, trims, tools and general fashion terms from Apparel Search
In American English, a purse is a small bag, also called a handbag, fashionably designed and used to hold items such as a wallet, keys, tissues, makeup, a hairbrush or other personal items. In British English, a purse is a small money container similar to a wallet, but typically used by women and including a compartment for coins, while a handbag is considerably larger. The same word therefore names the bag itself in one variety of English and the money holder carried inside it in the other.
In American English, a purse is a small bag, also called a handbag.
In British English, a purse is a small money container similar to a wallet, but typically used by women and including a compartment for coins, with a handbag being considerably larger.
A purse or handbag is often fashionably-designed, and is used to hold a number of items such as a wallet, keys, tissues, makeup, a hairbrush, feminine products, or other items
Variations
Purses are usually carried by women, though men sometimes carry one as a smaller alternative to a backpack; such a purse is sometimes self-consciously termed a "murse" or "manbag" (portmanteaus "man" with "purse" and "handbag" respectively). It can also be bluntly called a "man-purse".
A medium-to-small-sized purse with a short handle, designed to be carried (clutched) in one's hand is often called a clutch.
A larger purse with two handles is often called a tote.
A pocketbook is similar to a purse (in the British English sense), but allows the carrying of sheets of paper as well.
A security purse is designed to protect the carrier from travel theft. The purse includes a invisible stainless steel strap sewned into the fabric and a protectant on the main zipper.
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| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/purse). Modified by Apparel Search 12/26/06. |
Few fashion terms change their meaning at the Atlantic as completely as purse. In American English the purse is the bag: a small, fashionably designed handbag carried to hold the day's necessities — wallet, keys, tissues, makeup, hairbrush and other personal items. In British English the purse is much smaller: a money container similar to a wallet, typically used by women and including a compartment for coins, while the larger carried bag is called the handbag. Neither usage is wrong, but they describe objects of entirely different size, and a shopper, cataloguer or retailer working across both markets has to know which object the word points to. The coin purse resolves the overlap in both dialects: a small purse just large enough to hold money and cards, sized for the British meaning even when sold under the American one.
Whatever the dialect, the purse sits at the meeting point of function and fashion. It is a container, judged by what it holds and how securely it closes, and simultaneously one of the most visibly designed objects in a wardrobe, made in fashion's materials and colors and changed with fashion's seasons. That double nature explains the range of named forms. The clutch is the evening reduction of the idea: medium-to-small, with a short handle or none, designed to be clutched in the hand and to carry only the essentials. The tote is the expansion: a larger purse with two handles, built to carry substantially more. Between them stand forms such as the hobo, the satchel — a large bag with a small handle carried on the arm rather than on the shoulder — the duffle for travel or sports, and the shopper and cross-body styles, each name fixing a shape, a size and a way of being carried.
Purses are usually carried by women, though men sometimes carry one as a smaller alternative to a backpack; such a purse is sometimes termed a murse or manbag, blending man with purse and handbag respectively, or bluntly a man-purse. The vocabulary is playful, but the underlying point is practical: a small personal bag answers a real carrying need that pockets alone do not meet, whoever carries it. The pocketbook occupies a neighboring definition — similar to a purse in the British English sense, but allowing the carrying of sheets of paper, a reminder that these categories were shaped by what people needed to transport before phones consolidated the list.
Design also responds to risk. A security purse is designed to protect the carrier from travel theft, with an invisible stainless steel strap sewn into the fabric and a protectant on the main zipper — construction details aimed at the two classic attacks on a bag, the cut strap and the opened closure. At the fashion end of the market, named designer bags and celebrated styles carry the purse furthest from pure utility, yet even there the definition holds: a container, carried by hand, handle or strap, sized somewhere between the coin purse and the tote, whose contents are the owner's portable necessities. The word's two English meanings are best kept side by side in any glossary, because the object a reader pictures depends entirely on which side of the Atlantic their English comes from.
In American English, a purse is a small bag — a handbag — used to hold items such as a wallet, keys, tissues, makeup and a hairbrush. In British English, a purse is the small money container, similar to a wallet, that is carried inside the handbag.
A clutch is a medium-to-small-sized purse with a short handle, or no handle, designed to be carried — clutched — in the hand. It is the small, usually evening form of the handbag family.
A tote is a larger purse with two handles, designed to carry more than the essentials. Related forms include the coin purse, just large enough for money and cards, and the pocketbook, which can also carry sheets of paper.