What it means
Extra cash or profit, especially when it turns up unexpectedly or you’ve made a little on the side. A nice bit of bunce could be a refund you forgot about, a bonus at work, or flogging something for more than you paid. It’s not lottery money, just that sweet little boost that has you walking around like you’ve won.
Usage examples
"Had a random leccy refund hit my account on the bus. Nice bit of bunce, mate, I’m off to the chippy for a proper scran."
"Sold the old garden mower at the car boot sale in Stratford-upon-Avon for forty quid more than I paid for it, proper bit of bunce on top of the eight pounds for the cherry tomatoes that the lady from the allotment had grown to perfection this summer."
"My uncle picks up a bit of bunce every December at the racecourse near Doncaster when he runs the betting kiosk for the family bookmaker, two weeks of overtime, a Christmas hamper from the boss and a thank-you tenner from every regular punter on the way out."
Where it comes from
Bunce came out of the Romani word bunce or bunce-money meaning extra payment, brought into nineteenth-century English by the travelling community and adopted by the East End market traders of London. The word retained the original Romani sense of a small windfall or supplementary gain, the unexpected pound on top of the agreed price for a horse trade. By the nineteen-fifties bunce had become Cockney rhyming territory, used by costermongers and bus conductors for the bit of profit on the side, and the British press picked it up to describe office Christmas bonuses without any particular shame.
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