lucre - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English lūcre, lucor, lucour, lucur (“gain in money, profit; money; wages; illicit gain; advantage, benefit”), from Old French lucre or Latin lucrum (“advantage, profit; love of gain, avarice”),[1][2] from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂w- (“gain, profit”) + *-tlom (variant of *-trom (suffix forming nouns denoting tools or instruments)).

lucre (uncountable)

  1. Money, riches, or wealth, especially when seen as having a corrupting effect or causing greed, or obtained in an underhanded manner.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Timothy 3:2–3:
      A Biſhop then muſt be blameleſſe, the huſband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behauiour, giuen to hoſpitalitie, apt to teach; / Not giuen to wine, no ſtriker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not couetous; […]
    • 1810 July 13, William Cobbett, “To the Reader”, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, volume XVIII, number 1, London: Printed by T[homas] C[urson] Hansard, Peterborough Court, Fleet Street; and sold by Richard Bagshaw, Brydges Street, Covent-Garden, and John Budd, Pall-Mall, published 14 July 1810, →OCLC, columns 13–14:
      When a man bargains for the price of maintaining such or such principles, or of endeavouring to make out such or such a case, without believing in the soundness of the principles or the truth of the case; such a man, whether he touch the cash (or paper-money) before or after the performance of his work, and whether he work with his tongue or his pen, may, I think be fairly charged with seeking after "base lucre;" for he, in such case, manifestly sells not only the use of his talents, but his sincerity into the bargain, and drives a traffic as nearly allied to soul-selling as any thing in this world can be; […]
    • 1884 December, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”, in Pall Mall Christmas “Extra”, London, →OCLC; republished as “The Body-snatcher”, in The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson: The Black Arrow; The Misadventures of John Nicholson; The Body-snatcher, volume 8, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895, →OCLC, page 421:
      […] [I]t's only fair that you should pocket the lucre. I've had my share already.

money, riches, or wealth

  1. ^ “lūcre, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “lucre, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Learned borrowing from Latin lucrum.

lucre m (plural lucres)

  1. lucre

lucre

  1. inflection of lucrar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

lucre

  1. inflection of lucrar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

lucre

  1. inflection of lucrar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative