Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. money; thus pull/rake in the shekels, to prosper.

[1678		J. Ray Proverbs (2nd edn) 405: If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two].
1871		L.H. Bagg Four Years at Yale 47: Shekels, money.
1877		‘A High Private’ Man who was not a Colonel 8: The human mind is so constituted that it hankers after shekels, when it has done work.
1879		Cincinnati Enquirer 7 Sept. 10/7: Wealth, Ore, Dust, Rocks, Spondulicks, Shekels, Ducats, Nicks, Flimsies, Filthy Lucre, Trash, Shiners, Shinnies--are the synonyms of money.
1881		Brooklyn Dly Eagle (NY) 11 Dec. 4/7: ‘The Ballad of the Bunco man’ He was a festive bunco sharp / And had a little plan / For catching shekels on the Q / From the verdant countryman.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn 264: They’ve got all their own money back. and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 June 6/3: The defendant escaped from custody […] and appealed to the Petty Sessions Court, where the judgment was reversed, and the financier called upon to produce shekels to the extent of £4 10s.
1889		Music Hall & Theatre Rev 17 Aug. 6/2: We trust Nye will come out with no end of shekels.
1890		A.C. Gunter Miss Nobody of Nowhere 278: You would have half the money changers of England against you; they always make a pretty long and hard battle for their shekels.
1893		A. Bierce letter 16 Apr. in Pope Letters of Ambrose Bierce (1922) 30: I can’t hold you and inject sheckels into your pocket.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 29 July 3/6: And he leered a leer, did the auctioneer, as he shovelled the shekels in.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 3 Jan. 4/7: His win, perchance, would leave them shekels short.
1905		Sporting Times 11 Feb. 4/1: He made me put a couple of shekels on a horse which also ran.
1908		D. Stewart Wild Tribes of London in Illus. Police News 22 Feb. 12/3: ‘We all love de sheckles, mein frient’.
1915		J. Buchan Thirty-Nine Steps (1930) 7: The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 320: I know where he’s gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. – Who? says I. – Bloom, he says, the courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on Throwaway and he’s gone to gather in the shekels.
1936		C. Sandburg People, Yes 165: The mazuma, the jack, the shekels, the kale.
1936		A.E. Duckett ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 25 July 7/1: [A]llee samee, Chink is pulling in the shekels.
1940		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Jan. 7/1: A half-dozen other ‘angels’ will go to court with claims of lost shekels.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 84: ‘Smash, dough, fiddlies, coin, tin, hay, oot, shekels, sponduliks,’ said Gordon. ‘I’m still the highest paid member of this company.’.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 127: A haven for free enterprisers who vied with each other for the woodsmen’s shekels.
1962		T. Berger Reinhart in Love (1963) 81: If you were half the man our roomer [...] is, you’d of got a defense job and made the shekels rather than running off to the Army.
1965		F.J. Hardy Yarns of Billy Borker 56: ‘Listen Sheckles,’ he says, ‘you are always yak-yaking about how much money you’re making’.
1968		A. Burgess Enderby Outside in Complete Enderby (2002) 365: There’d them shoving it up the old kazerzy [...] very painful for my shekels and sherbet.
1972		J. McNeill Old Familiar Juice (1973) 82: [T]he wogs had [...] anything you wanted if you could weigh in the sheckles.
1977		K. Gilbert Living Black 28: We didn’t get much wage but at least it was a roof and a bed and a feed and a few shekels that we got for our pay.
1989		H. Leonard Out After Dark 168: Yes, I got the readies, the few shekels.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 12: Plenty shekels in it.
2000		N. Barlay Crumple Zone 225: Cos that’s what he’s after innit, all the sheks Dennie owed.
2005		P. Howard Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress 95: I end up [...] wondering how many shekels it’d cost to keep something like that interested.
2010		K. Richards Life 480: [He] makes sure that at the end of the day the right shekels end up in the right pot.
2021		P Howard Braywatch 71: Who am I kidding pretending that I’m doing this for the shekels?

2. (US) dollars.

2001

‘Randy Everhard’ Tattoo of a Naked Lady 6: And the only prize he’s going home with is a teddy bear that cost me three shekels per, wholesale.