"line one's pockets" meaning in English

See line one's pockets in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-line one's pockets.ogg [Australia] Forms: lines one's pockets [present, singular, third-person], lining one's pockets [participle, present], lined one's pockets [participle, past], lined one's pockets [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} line one's pockets (third-person singular simple present lines one's pockets, present participle lining one's pockets, simple past and past participle lined one's pockets)
  1. (idiomatic) To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: feather one's nest
    Sense id: en-line_one's_pockets-en-verb-C5ceh6gD Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for line one's pockets meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lines one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lining one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lined one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lined one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "line one's pockets (third-person singular simple present lines one's pockets, present participle lining one's pockets, simple past and past participle lined one's pockets)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1873 June 19, “Philadelphia's Rings”, in New York Times, retrieved 2009-02-28, page 1",
          "text": "The men who have lined their pockets with public plunder and made the Municipal Government a nest of thieves—will any one in his sober senses believe that in all these men did they were doing more than struggling for a continuance of their own power?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1915, Joseph Conrad, chapter 7, in Victory: An Island Tale",
          "text": "And now, after lining his pockets with other people's money, he kidnaps a white girl belonging to an orchestra.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 March 13, Douglas Waller, “Tax Cheats On The Federal Payroll”, in Time, retrieved 2009-02-28",
          "text": "In most cases, the scofflaws didn't pay their corporate income tax or company owners lined their pockets with the IRS payroll taxes they'd collected from their employees.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 August 12, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Rail passenger services nationalised in all but name”, in Rail, page 6",
          "text": "However the Labour Party and rail unions regard the move as a step closer to full nationalisation. TSSA General Secretary Manuel Cortes said: \"The ONS has candidly exposed the truth about our railways. They are now in public ownership. Grant Shapps must now take direct control of running them, rather than continue to line the pockets of privateers.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner."
      ],
      "id": "en-line_one's_pockets-en-verb-C5ceh6gD",
      "links": [
        [
          "accumulate",
          "accumulate"
        ],
        [
          "personal",
          "personal"
        ],
        [
          "wealth",
          "wealth"
        ],
        [
          "illegal",
          "illegal"
        ],
        [
          "morally",
          "morally"
        ],
        [
          "objectionable",
          "objectionable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "feather one's nest"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-line one's pockets.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/fc/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "line one's pockets"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lines one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lining one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lined one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lined one's pockets",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "line one's pockets (third-person singular simple present lines one's pockets, present participle lining one's pockets, simple past and past participle lined one's pockets)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1873 June 19, “Philadelphia's Rings”, in New York Times, retrieved 2009-02-28, page 1",
          "text": "The men who have lined their pockets with public plunder and made the Municipal Government a nest of thieves—will any one in his sober senses believe that in all these men did they were doing more than struggling for a continuance of their own power?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1915, Joseph Conrad, chapter 7, in Victory: An Island Tale",
          "text": "And now, after lining his pockets with other people's money, he kidnaps a white girl belonging to an orchestra.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 March 13, Douglas Waller, “Tax Cheats On The Federal Payroll”, in Time, retrieved 2009-02-28",
          "text": "In most cases, the scofflaws didn't pay their corporate income tax or company owners lined their pockets with the IRS payroll taxes they'd collected from their employees.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 August 12, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Rail passenger services nationalised in all but name”, in Rail, page 6",
          "text": "However the Labour Party and rail unions regard the move as a step closer to full nationalisation. TSSA General Secretary Manuel Cortes said: \"The ONS has candidly exposed the truth about our railways. They are now in public ownership. Grant Shapps must now take direct control of running them, rather than continue to line the pockets of privateers.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "accumulate",
          "accumulate"
        ],
        [
          "personal",
          "personal"
        ],
        [
          "wealth",
          "wealth"
        ],
        [
          "illegal",
          "illegal"
        ],
        [
          "morally",
          "morally"
        ],
        [
          "objectionable",
          "objectionable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To accumulate personal wealth, especially in an illegal or morally objectionable manner."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-line one's pockets.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/fc/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/En-au-line_one%27s_pockets.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "feather one's nest"
    }
  ],
  "word": "line one's pockets"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.