burse

Borrowed from Middle French bourse, from Old French borse, from Latin bursa, from Ancient Greek βύρσα (búrsa). Doublet of purse, compare French bourse (“purse, fund”).

burse (plural burses)

1. (now chiefly historical) A purse.
   • 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter IX, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 90:

     Roche stepped forward with a leather burse, announcing that he would pay for both of us.

   • 2021 January 22, The Guardian:

     Try a burse instead – sort of a bag, sort of a purse, inspired by the cases that hold the corporal cloth used in mass, and designed to be carried by men.

2. A fund or foundation for the maintenance of the needy scholars in their studies.
3. (ecclesiastical) An ornamental case to hold the corporal when not in use.
4. (obsolete) A stock exchange; a bourse.
5. (obsolete) A kind of bazaar.

• “burse”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• Reubs, Ruebs, Suber, Ubers, buers, bures, erubs, rebus, resub, rubes, suber, urbes