out of pocket
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Paying personally for something
Literally: from one's own pocket
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The bombshell means that when bills go out next April, thousands could be up to £340 out of pocket.
They paid for the holiday out of her redundancy money.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “out of pocket” mean?
Paying personally for something Literally: from one's own pocket
Is “out of pocket” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
What is the closest equivalent?
“cháy túi” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.