shekels n.
1. money; thus pull/rake in the shekels, to prosper.
[ | Proverbs (2nd edn) 405: If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two]. | |
Four Years at Yale 47: Shekels, money. | ||
Man who was not a Colonel 8: The human mind is so constituted that it hankers after shekels, when it has done work. | ||
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. | ||
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. | ||
(con. c.1840) Huckleberry Finn 264: They’ve got all their own money back. and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides. | ||
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. | ||
Music Hall & Theatre Rev 17 Aug. 6/2: We trust Nye will come out with no end of shekels. | ||
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. | ||
Letters of Ambrose Bierce (1922) 30: I can’t hold you and inject sheckels into your pocket. | letter 16 Apr. in Pope||
Truth (Sydney) 29 July 3/6: And he leered a leer, did the auctioneer, as he shovelled the shekels in. | ||
Mirror of Life 28 Apr. 3/2: Alf has the happy faculty of gathering in the shekels where others would go broke. | ||
Toothsome Tales Told in Sl. 29: Elfie found herself without shelter or shekels in Kankakee. | ||
Sun. Times (Perth) 3 Jan. 4/7: His win, perchance, would leave them shekels short. | ||
Sporting Times 11 Feb. 4/1: He made me put a couple of shekels on a horse which also ran. | ||
Illus. Police News 22 Feb. 12/3: ‘We all love de sheckles, mein frient’. | Wild Tribes of London in||
Thirty-Nine Steps (1930) 7: The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. | ||
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. | ||
People, Yes 165: The mazuma, the jack, the shekels, the kale. | ||
N.Y. Age 25 July 7/1: [A]llee samee, Chink is pulling in the shekels. | ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in||
Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Jan. 7/1: A half-dozen other ‘angels’ will go to court with claims of lost shekels. | ||
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.’. | ||
USA Confidential 127: A haven for free enterprisers who vied with each other for the woodsmen’s shekels. | ||
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. | ||
Yarns of Billy Borker 56: ‘Listen Sheckles,’ he says, ‘you are always yak-yaking about how much money you’re making’. | ||
Enderby Outside in Complete Enderby (2002) 365: There’d them shoving it up the old kazerzy [...] very painful for my shekels and sherbet. | ||
Old Familiar Juice (1973) 82: [T]he wogs had [...] anything you wanted if you could weigh in the sheckles. | ||
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. | ||
Out After Dark 168: Yes, I got the readies, the few shekels. | ||
It Was An Accident 12: Plenty shekels in it. | ||
Crumple Zone 225: Cos that’s what he’s after innit, all the sheks Dennie owed. | ||
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. | ||
Life 480: [He] makes sure that at the end of the day the right shekels end up in the right pot. | ||
Braywatch 71: Who am I kidding pretending that I’m doing this for the shekels? |
2. (US) dollars.
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. |