to line one's pocket(s)
- idiom
- Informal
:
llenarse los bolsillos
- Nobody escapes the Sheriff unless he's lining his pockets.
Examples
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I ain't lining your pockets again, Ken.
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That ought to make Douglas happy, lining his pockets with land fees.
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Who's been lining his pockets?
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By lining your pockets.
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You've been too tolerant a man, Isaiah Poster... too interested in lining your pocket.
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The politician was accused of lining his pockets with funds meant for public projects.
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It's unethical to line one's pockets by exploiting vulnerable communities for profit.
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Many businesses line their pockets by cutting corners and ignoring safety regulations.
Synonyms
1
9.0
To steal money from your workplace, for example from a cash register
1
9.1
Take money secretly from payments, often in an illegal way
How Dishonest
Surface Forms
Morphology
There is a loose, partially recoverable relation between the parts and the idiom: 'pockets' evokes money and a learner might infer some sense of putting money into one's pockets, but the verb 'line' (to cover the inside) does not itself mean 'fill' or 'profit', and the important sense of profiting, often dishonestly or by abusing position, is not directly derivable. Because the connection is metaphorical and requires cultural/idiomatic knowledge to recover the full meaning (especially the dishonest nuance), it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The verb line one's pocket(s) comes from the image of lining a pocket with money, as if tucking cash into the inside to hide or keep it. That's why it now means 'to make money, often dishonestly'.