piggy bank
16
1.0
- noun
- /ˈpɪɡi bæŋk/
:
hucha
- I keep my money in a piggy bank.
- open piggy bank
- money in my piggy bank
- break your piggy bank
You smash the Piggy Bank and you spend the money.
- You smash the Piggy Bank and you spend the money.
- I came home from the store one day and I always put all of my change in the two piggy banks.
- I can remember sitting in this bedroom after smoking these rocks and going through a Piggy Bank.
Examples
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You can place the money in a piggy bank, jar, or other container.
Blog text (28) -
I should just go home and break open the piggy bank.
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You broke open the piggy bank, huh?
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You actually have a piggy bank?
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You put it in your piggy bank.
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Are you sure there's enough money in your piggy bank?
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Tan comes, carrying a red earthen pig, a kind of piggy bank.
Fiction book (1998) -
My piggy bank yielded only $3.27—certainly not enough to buy something nice.
Fiction book (1996) -
The first thing I did was raid my children's piggy banks—literally.
Blog text (2) -
I keep my money in a piggy bank.
Synonyms
1
2.0
A small container with a slot on top for keeping coins or paper money
1
1.0
A small container with a slot for saving coins at home
A small container for keeping coins, often shaped like a pig
A small container with a slot for keeping coins at home
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound combines 'piggy' (pig-like) with 'bank' (place for money), so learners can infer a money-related object and that it is pig-shaped; however, understanding that 'bank' here denotes a small coin container rather than a financial institution relies on cultural/conventional knowledge. Because the specific object (a pig-shaped savings box) is a conventionalized artifact and not perfectly derivable from literal meanings alone, this is best classed as semi-transparent.
Etymology
Piggy bank may come from an old word 'pygg' for a kind of clay used to make jars for coins. Makers later shaped those coin jars like a pig, so the small coin bank became a pig-shaped container and now means 'a place for saving money'.