wallet: [19] Etymologically, a wallet may be something ‘rolled’ up. The word originally denoted a ‘traveller’s pack’; its application to a ‘small flat case for money and papers’ arose in 19th-century American English. It was probably borrowed from an Anglo-Norman *walet, which could have been formed from the prehistoric Germanic base *wal- ‘roll’ (source also of English wallow). [wallet etymology, wallet origin, 英语词源]