Careful Words

pocket (n.)

pocket (v.)

pocket (adj.)

  A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616): Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. vii.

  A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.

John Dennis (1657-1734): The Gentleman's Magazine. Vol. li. Page 324.

  The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it.

Charles Macklin (1690-1797): Love à la Mode. Act ii. Sc. 1.

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,

And put it in his pocket!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.