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Pickpocket   /pˈɪkpˌɑkət/   Listen
Pickpocket

noun
1.
A thief who steals from the pockets or purses of others in public places.  Synonyms: cutpurse, dip.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pickpocket" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a most detestable murder; and Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have villainy enough amongst them to furnish an average pickpocket. Roxana occasionally talks about a hell within, and even has unpleasant dreams concerning 'apparitions of devils and monsters, of falling into gulphs, and from off high and steep precipices.' She has, moreover, excellent reasons for her discomfort. Still, in spite ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... and then sat down beside the cot. Slowly and carefully, like some pickpocket, she inserted her fingers under the pillow. Amid a tenseness that affected even the actors working with her, Alice took out the papers, inch by inch, and began to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one, relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... living like a decent creature. I have done everything you could expect, and more. But I will not be mixed up with you and the gang you choose to make your friends; and I will not lift a finger to save your friend the pickpocket from the ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... I know you as the most expert pickpocket in the country. I've been on your track a long time. Now you can just pony up and go on with your flirtin'; otherwise you and the ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey

... on the new settlement, the others being high priced. As Lowndes says, "A work of no authority, but frequently printed." Barrington, the pickpocket, whose name it bears, had nothing to do with it. It was pirated from Phillip, Collins, etc. It went through various editions and enlargements to 1810 or later. After 1795 the name was altered to 'Voyage to New ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... too much pickpocket, too much dirt. Bottom always drop out of bucket shop at last. I understand, end in police court and severe magistrate, or perhaps even 'Gentlemen of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... indifferent; I look upon a woman now as literature, no more. It has come to the end. Well, and what then? Everything comes to an end. When first I entered on this stage I had a feeling as if I had lost something; as if I had been favoured by the caresses of a pickpocket. Then I set to and felt myself about, to see if I could bear myself after this; if I could endure myself as I was now. Oh well, yes, why not? Not the same as before, of course, but it all passed off so noiselessly, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... entirely logical for The Eel to steal the wallet—he is a pickpocket. Second, that the theft of the wallet is not of trivial importance to Goldie's destiny and to his—they are "broke" and they must get away; the money solves all their problems. And third, note that while The ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of decayed wood, like a part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Not till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes flew wide open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were depressed, and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril." Finding this game did not work, he soon began to "play possum" again. I put a cover over my study wood-box ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... in here raising the mischief, and tearing his hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes along. And he says that that distressing item of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... compared with which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honourable, did Barere now descend. It was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ceiling. "Wally," he said, "I was relaxing in the car with Sergeant Holliday driving. We passed a certain area on Michigan near Randolph and I caught the strong mental impression of someone who—in this day and age, mind you—had had the temerity to pickpocket a wallet containing twenty-seven dollars. The sum of twenty-seven dollars was connected with the fact that the rewards made the risk worth taking; there were distinct impressions of playing that twenty-seven bucks across the board on three very especial nags at the Derby. The impression ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith

... big, open-faced, silver watch which was connected to his vest in pickpocket-proof fashion with a braided leather thong. When it told him nine thirty had arrived, he got up, his telescope in his hand, and ambled heavily down the corridor. He poked his head in at an open door, and called, amiably, "Kin anybody tell me ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird of prey. "Red is your taste in your old age is it?" she said to the portrait. "Red hair, and a scrofulous complexion, and a padded figure, a ballet-girl's walk, and a pickpocket's light fingers. Miss Gwilt! Miss, with those eyes, and that walk!" She turned her head suddenly on the pillow, and burst into a harsh, jeering laugh. "Miss!" she repeated over and over again, with the venomously pointed emphasis of the most merciless of all human forms of contempt—the contempt ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... as a pickpocket and housebreaker in London. He was Captain Roberts's lieutenant, and was afterwards given command of a prize, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... against the people; who is for the boodle politician and against the happiness of the many; who is for the white exploiter and against the simple colored man; who is for the rich profiteer and against the petty burglar and pickpocket. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... gone out. As to M. Saint Pavin, I found him at the office of his paper, 'The Financial Pilot.' He is a coarse and vulgar personage, and received me like a pickpocket. I had ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... Connie, too, was known by several people, and although in her old clothes, and with her hair fastened round her head, she did not look nearly so striking as when Mammy Warren had used her as a decoy-duck in order to pursue her pickpocket propensities, yet still her little face was altogether on a different plane from the ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... of a twinkle in 'em. Always does. I know some like the wide-set, stary kind that go with an open-faced smile and a loud haw-haw; but for me the quiet chuckle and the twinklin' eye! Still, he hadn't proved yet that he wa'n't a pickpocket or a wife beater; so I just nods non-committal over my shoulder and resumes my usual ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... I came round to the opening, and stooping, peered cautiously inside. There, sure enough, was my pickpocket gazing intently into the open purse, and chuckling as he gazed. Then he slipped it into his pocket, and out he came—where I immediately pinned him ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... given you any cause of offence, Jack, why don't you pitch into him?" suggested a half-drunken fellow who bore the enviable reputation of being a most expert pickpocket. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... the King beat but two men, and they both well deserved it. The first was a valet, who would not let him enter the garden during one of his own fetes. The other was a pickpocket, whom the King saw emptying the pocket of M. de Villars. Louis XIV., who was on horseback, rode towards the thief and struck him with his cane; the rascal cried out, "Murder! I shall be killed!" which made us all laugh, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... waste"—here Morris groaned, but asked no questions—"besides," and her voice became earnest, "I will not have him talking to you like that. The fact that one man is the father of another man doesn't give him the right to abuse him like a pickpocket. Also, if you are so good that you put up with it, I have myself to consider—that is, if we are all to live as a happy family. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... his late teens was Curlie. Slender, dark, with coal-black eyes, with curls of the same hue clinging tightly to his well-shaped head, he had the strong profile and the smooth tapering fingers that might belong to an artist, a pickpocket ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell

... upon as a successful businessman any more than a pirate is a successful trader; success must clearly imply obedience to the rules of the game. Taking all that one can grab without punishment is a reversion to barbarism; the unscrupulous magnate is morally no better than a pickpocket. And these men are, in general, responsive to public opinion; it has effected rapid improvement in some points in the past few years. Just so soon as the community conscience is aroused to the point of a general condemnation ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... of pickpockets. No smoking.' They quote her in the lifts on the Tube. But then I'm not a pickpocket, and you are smoking. Besides, your picture knows mine very well. They've seen quite a lot of each ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... exaggerated for the purposes of a debating argument; but in his long essay on the subject he gives a far more reasonable statement of the case. He does not treat the doctor as a murderer, or a pickpocket, or a human vulture, or even a cold-blooded cynic; he explains what is likely to happen to the ordinary, moderately decent, normal man, without any special moral or intellectual equipment, who becomes a doctor. "As to the honour and conscience of doctors, they have ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... departed to Langbridge Farm, and Miss Currie had peeped round the corner of the house, to see how it was faring with the balloonist. She found her worst fears confirmed; her father was standing under the pear tree and abusing the poor man like a pickpocket. The girl, realising how futile it would be for her to put in an appearance and add to the already deafening hurly-burly, quietly secreted herself in a lilac-bush, and listened to what was going on. She began to laugh as the ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... quick in her motions," suggested Jack, "and from what we know of the man she was with, she may have been just such a character herself, and have learned deftness of fingers from him. He was evidently a pickpocket, and perhaps she had practiced the trade herself. That is the only explanation I ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh

... mounted on wild-looking horses, came dashing down the road in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. 'That's Gypsy Will and his gang,' lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; 'we shall have another fight.' The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... philosopher; but in one thing thou hast blundered: the gods created thee a pickpocket, and thou hast become a demon. That is ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... wanted a witness, and he could not find any man just then who could sign his name. He was one of the Lord Mayor's men, but notwithstanding by this time had become a pretty smart hand. He had been a pickpocket or something of that sort it the streets of London, and always spoke of himself as being a gentleman, and was fond of ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... indifferent person for an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person—particularly as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hesitation he dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, with the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... a graphic picture of a justice, which must be received, perhaps, with some reservation;—"I was walking with Barrington, the most accomplished pickpocket: he was arm-in-arm with Richard Atkins, Esq. I wished to have some conversation with them. A bottle of rum was produced, and some pleasant conversation about Ireland passed. At length I wished to retire, and Mr. A. said he never allowed any ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... with the indifference to subject, which was the commonplace of all art criticism since Bastien-Lepage, that I could at times see nothing else but subject. I thought that, though it might not matter to the man himself whether he loved a white woman or a black, a female pickpocket or a regular communicant of the Church of England, if only he loved strongly, it certainly did matter to his relations and even under some circumstances to his whole neighbourhood. Sometimes indeed, like some father in Moliere, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... "I worked in a beauty parlor for a little as a hairdresser and manicure. I'm out for the money, Hiram. I'm not a pickpocket yet, but that's because I don't know how to be one. But if you've got any loose change in your pockets watch out. I'm out for the coin. But here comes Al. He brought me down. He's going to set me up ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the Professor, who had once belabored me in his feeble way, but one can generally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the older man. "A theoretical socialist always seemed to me about like a theoretical pickpocket—neither of them stands to do much harm. For example, here you are, one of the richest young fellows of my acquaintance, living along very contentedly where every tenet you profess to hold is daily outraged. You're not giving away your money. You take a healthy interest in a ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... having been assured to the contrary—having asked the price of the Damascus cream, which was "only three-and-sixpence," (stamp included)—he purchased and paid for it with a rueful air, and took his departure. He sneaked homeward along the streets with the air of a pickpocket, fearful that every one he met was an officer who had his eye on him. He was not, in fact, very far off the mark; for many a person smiled, and stared, and turned round to look at him ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... from laughing at the pirate chief going on in this way about being taken in. As he whispered to Tom, when he had the chance, it reminded him of the pickpocket who had stolen a watch, complaining of being hardly used because the article turned ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... held the paper up to the light, regardless of the fact that the policeman was watching his proceedings with the interest naturally due from a man of his profession to a suspicious-looking character who was probably a convicted pickpocket. The first sentence once more told him the worst. There was no doubt at all about it. The three guineas in his pocket were the price ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... place," said his companion, with the air of one who presents his credentials, "I want you to understand that I am a crook. Out West I am known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, second-story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round burglar, cardsharp and slickest con man west of the Twenty-third Street ferry landing—that's my history. That's to show I'm on the square—with you. My ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... seemed to think any the less of them for so doing. They raised points that made the refinements of the ancient schoolmen seem blunt in comparison. No respecters of persons, they harried the rich and taunted the powerful, and would have as soon jailed a bishop or a judge as a pickpocket if he deserved it. Between them they knew more kinds of law than most of their professional brethren, and as Mr. Tutt was a bookworm and a seeker after legal and other lore their dusty old library was full of hidden treasures, which on frequent occasions were unearthed to entertain ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... that Department soon began to be familiar with his presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal difference being that the object of the latter class of public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great Department; and so the work ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, "pickpocket," and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field's hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... be complete in its guiltiness. For Heaven's sake, Mrs Bompas, let that glove alone: you look like a pickpocket. ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw

... by, and seemed to be watching us narrowly. I felt almost sure that he suspected something was wrong; but probably he had got a habit of scrutinising everything which approached him, as a London pickpocket does when he knows that the police are aware of his course of life. As we dropped past the brig's quarter, I got a better view of his countenance, and I felt sure that I had seen it before. It was that of a man I supposed to have been hidden long ago, with all his ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... hut is yours, that's another matter," I said. "But I don't intend like a pickpocket to take it ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... he, grinding his teeth, "got out of his window—and three policemen in his garden. He must have bribed a pickpocket—low knave that he is. But ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "Gibelin beamed. 'The old school has its good points, after all'" "'I know why you are thinking about that prison'" "She was just bending over it when Coquenil entered" "'Did you write this?'" "And when he could think no longer, he listened to the pickpocket" "'They all swore black and blue that Addison told the truth'" "A door was opened suddenly and he was pushed into a room" "'Stand still, I won't hurt you'" "'There!' he said with a hideous grin, and he handed Tignol the tooth" "'My dog, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... crocodiles in sundry watering-pots, and other crawling things in unexpected places. You never quite know where the next surprise is coming from. I always feel doubtful about his pockets. I shouldn't recommend a pickpocket to try them, unless he really doesn't mind running against a casual rattlesnake. Tyrrell is the sort of man who is quite likely to produce something from his cap and say: "By-the-bye, this is a promising youngster—death adder, you know. And here," taking something ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Emerson did not fail to have his share of disasters. He wrote from Albany, in 1865, to Mr. Fields: —An unlucky accident drives me here to make a draft on you for fifty dollars, which I hope will not annoy you. The truth is that I lost my wallet—I fear to some pickpocket—in Fairhaven, Vermont, night before last (some $70 or $80 in it), and had to borrow money of a Samaritan lady to come here. I pray you do not whisper it to the swallows for fear it should go to ——, and he should print it in "Fraser." I am ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... say I've changed my mind and have decided that I ain't going to marry. Takes me really for a man, she does. Must be a fool, she must. And she ain't asked for money, ain't that funny? If she writes back she'll abuse me like a pickpocket, anyway. Won't he be mad when he ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... point of disputing the hypothesis, but prudently checked myself. Suddenly he removed my hat and put his broad, hard palm upon my organs with an impudent dexterity which made me doubt whether he had not been a pickpocket ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... don't care, But you do not believe me" (here the nose went still higher): "I suppose if you dared you would call me a liar. Our engagement is ended, sir—yes, on the spot; You're a brute, and a monster, and—I don't know what." I mildly suggested the words Hottentot, Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief, As gentle expletives which might give relief: But this only proved as a spark to the powder, And the storm I had raised came faster and louder; It blew, and it rained, thundered, lightened, and hailed Interjections, verbs, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... realised. Madame Milovidov did not interrupt Aratov; she did not understand very well what this unknown visitor was saying to her, and merely opened her eyes rather wide and rolled them upon him, thinking, however, that he had a quiet respectable air, was well dressed ... and not a pickpocket ... hadn't ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... pickpocket are a light tread, a delicate sense of touch, combined with firm nerves. These boys may be known by their shoes in the street; they generally wear pumps, or shoes of a very light make, having long quarters. There is about their countenance an affected determination of purpose, and they walk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various

... Bamberger," said the director, approaching, "not that way. 'A pickpocket—well?' so. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... itself had the appearance of "Pluto's diet-drink, that witches tipple out of dead men's skulls;" and the company included "a silly fop and a worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," as big a boaster as Falstaff, and a more delicately ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... a little work of my own," I answered, after greeting. If I felt much like a disconcerted pickpocket I was careful to conceal the circumstance, and spoke with easy indifference. "You have come back before I expected ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived by robbery ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... another is that pickpocket My Diocleides. He bought t'other day Six fleeces at seven drachms, his last exploit. What were they? scraps of worn-out pedlar's-bags, Sheer trash.—But put your cloak and mantle on; And we'll to Ptolemy's, the sumptuous ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... a most accomplished, prepossessing villain, my dear Q.M. Your upper class villains are always prepossessing. Manners are as necessary to them as a small hand to a pickpocket." ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... at once proceed to the next magistrate and denounce the criminal, I can only throw myself for excuse on the illustrious example of George the Fourth, head of Church and State, who once in society saw a pickpocket remove from a gentleman's fob his gold watch, winking at the king as he did so. "Of course I couldn't say anything," remarked the good-natured monarch, "for the rascal took me ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... once said to my father: "It is in our very blood. It may be only a pin, but I cannot help taking it, although I am quite ready to give it back to its owner." The pickpocket Bor... confessed that at the age of twelve he had begun to steal in the streets and at school, to the extent of taking things from under his schoolfellows' pillows, and that it was impossible for him to resist stealing, even when his pockets were full. If he ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... appearance, we began to watch him. We have got no evidence against him yet; but yesterday I pointed him out to a New York policeman, who happened to be here, and he says he knows him well. It seems he is a regular pickpocket by profession, and has served a term at Blackwell's Island. [1] He was liberated last month, and came on here to follow the business where he isn't known. But we keep a sharp eye on him, and as we have noticed that your son is quite intimate with him, I thought it my duty to inform you of it. ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell

... slanders upon himself, the great Mully Ully Gue. And the fifty would soon be five hundred if any notice were taken of them. They call mankind to witness that science will not defend itself, though publicly attacked in terms which might sting a pickpocket into standing up for his character: science, in return, allows mankind to witness or not, at pleasure, that it does not defend itself, and yet receives no injury from centuries of assault. Demonstrative reason never ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... a hardened little sinner! I abused her like a pickpocket, and called her an ungrateful serpent! Bring some sackcloth and ashes, somebody, quickly! I shall go in mourning for ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... to think over was how to stay in the "bucket-shop" business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are—silly to look down, sillier to feel badly when we're looked ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... I can judge of London,' said Miss Browning, sententiously continuing her tirade against the place, 'it's no better than a pickpocket and a robber dressed up in the spoils of honest folk. I should like to know where my Lord Hollingford was bred, and Mr. Roger Hamley. Your good husband lent me that report of the meeting, Mrs Gibson, where so much was said ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Horncastle, who occupied a bed in the next dormitory to that where Jack and I slept, had missed his collar-stud, which he described as "red coral," and complaining thereof to Mrs Nash, had been told by that lady that Smith and Batchelor had brought a young pickpocket into the house with them last night, and that being so, she was only surprised Mr Horncastle had not lost all the jewellery he possessed. Whereat, of course, Mr Horncastle was in a mighty state of wrath, and quite ready for poor Jack ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... to the world as a commercial pickpocket, as a looter of the public domain—after Congress has appropriated your fabulous coal claims—will you nail up the door of this little ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... out of here, this moment; and let me have no more of your prating. Now then, be gone out of my house, you sworn pickpocket, you veritable ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere

... The Pied Bull Inn, at Islington, was the first house in England where tobacco was smoked, while Moll Cut-Purse, a noted pickpocket who flourished in the time of Charles II., is said to have been the first Englishwoman ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... character of Court art. How different from true politics. For, comparing the talents of two professions that are very different, I cannot but think, that in the present sense of the word Politician, a common sharper or pickpocket, has every quality that can be required in the other, and accordingly I have personally known more than half a dozen in their hour esteemed equally to excell ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... the same time, secret association, than the one whose constitution and by-laws we now present to the reader. Composed of men of all classes and grades in society, from the priest at the altar, the judge on the bench, the lawyer at the bar, down to the most common felon and street thief or pickpocket, all bound together by a solemn oath, they laboured for the general cause of secret plunder, to the enriching of themselves at the expense of the mass. But having previously shown how I procured my information regarding these desperadoes, I shall ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... clothes at the swords' point when compared with the lawyer who despoils thee of thy whole estate with the stroke of a quill, and against whom thou canst claim no recompense or remedy? What is a pickpocket who steals a five- pound in comparison to a dice-sharper who robs thee of a hundred pounds in the third part of a night? And what the swindler that deceives thee in a worthless old hack compared with the apothecary who swindles thee of thy money ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... pickpocket Craig reached into the man's coat, pulled out a packet of papers, and gazed eagerly at one after another. From among them he unfolded one written in French to Madame Marie de Nevers some weeks before. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... unfortunate youths, notwithstanding that they had themselves proved unworthy of its benefits. He therefore came, determined to suffer whatever might be inflicted upon him, rather than go back to his wicked courses. We learned that he had been for several years a pickpocket, residing in a low lodging-house at 1s. 9d. a week; sometimes well off, sometimes otherwise, but always harassed by the terrors of punishment. According to his account of the boys who live in this manner, there are some who enjoy its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... not know how, under such a home government, I ever became a decent fellow. I do not know why I am not now a pirate, a freebooter, a pickpocket, or a nuisance to myself and the world in some other capacity. I have come to believe since that my inherited good qualities saved me under such an utter neglect of all home influences. It is a marvel ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... have been a strange sight that of Terry sitting on his dilapidated bed in the Rogues' Gallery, with his eternal cigarette in his mouth, talking to Marie and perhaps to some prostitute or pickpocket! We begin already to see the result on Marie's education: that will appear complex and manifold, but it is likely that on many a half-formed creature who afterward passed out of Terry's life, his words yet made an impression which perhaps ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in the darkness. "What is there in common between me and old Viola? More likely because the old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to steal. And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham," he went on with rising choler, "he will find it more difficult than he thinks to get rid of me. He will burn his fingers over that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I won't go without my watch, and as ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... they th-v-ng all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such a depredation? The kangaroos—your aborigines—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short forepuds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... in Bunyan's time, hanging to the girdle, or slung over the shoulder, as they now are in some parts of Germany. A pickpocket ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... away down the passage. Clubfoot laughed noisily, but I reflected mournfully that in my present sorry plight, unwashed and unshaven, in filthy clothes, haled along like a common pickpocket, even my own mother ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... your wish that we should be friendly, I spoke courteously to him, but he looked at me as if I were a dog. He might as well have struck me. I saw that my friends were greatly surprised, but of course I could not explain there, and yet it's not pleasant to be treated like a pickpocket, with no redress. I defy him," continued Hunting, assuming the tone and manner of one greatly wronged, "to prove anything worse against me than that I compelled him and his partners to pay money to which I had ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... this execution vastly as a spectator. He was, I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his accomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed, insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have been qualified for a first-class "knuck." He had not, like the rest, any political suggestion for the murder of the heads ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... Physics naturscienco, fiziko. Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. Piece (to patch) fliki. Piece ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly. Business before pleasure. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... onto the window-sill, while the other stayed outside the door. Those below in the yard saw the man crouching on the sill, and then there was a sudden smash of glass, and with a cry he fell in a heap on the stones at their feet. Then in the moonlight they saw the white face of the pickpocket peeping over the sill, and while some stayed in the yard, others ran into the house and helped the other man to break the door in. It was difficult to obtain an entrance even then, for it was barred with heavy furniture, but they got in at last, and ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... newspapers, which are a sort of safety-valve to let off all the bad feelings and malignant passions floating through the country, without any dread of the horsewhip. Hence it is the commonest thing in the world to hear one editor abusing, like a pickpocket, an opposition brother; calling him a reptile—a crawling thing—a calumniator—a hired vendor of lies; and his paper a smut-machine—a vile engine of corruption, as base and degraded as the proprietor, &c. Of this description ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the first time, I heard of the life you are leading. Is this how you repay me for all the trouble I took to have you well educated, and to make you an honest man? Here I find you living in luxury and extravagance—and how? On stolen money—money as much stolen as if you were a pickpocket or a burglar! A pleasant thing for me to have all my friends talking about Charles Daffy, the bookmaker and the moneylender! What right have you to dishonour your father in this way? I ask, what ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... was hot quarters for Cripps that morning, and once or twice he struck completely, and putting himself on his dignity, declared "he wasn't a-going to be questioned and brow-beated as if he was a common pickpocket!" which objection Mr Loman quietly silenced by saying "Very well," and turning to go, a movement which so terrified the worthy publican that he caved in at once, and submitted to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... rustler, cattle rustler, sandbagger, sea king, skin [Slang], sneak thief, spieler^, strong-arm man [U.S.]. highwayman, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Macheath, footpad, sturdy beggar. cut purse, pick purse; pickpocket, light-fingered gentry; sharper; card sharper, skittle sharper; thimblerigger; rook [Slang], Greek, blackleg, leg, welsher [Slang]; defaulter; Autolycus^, Jeremy Diddler^, Robert Macaire, artful dodger, trickster; swell mob [Slang], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... generally called "Master Bates," one of Fagin's "pupils," training to be a pickpocket. He is always laughing uproariously, and is almost equal in artifice and adroitness to "The Artful Dodger" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... doesn't matter, he's a bad, spiteful bird. He is like a pickpocket in his ways. He doesn't like man to be happy. When Christ was crucified it was the sparrow brought nails to the ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... what my father'd say, if he knew I'd been in the same class as a pickpocket," said the daughter of a minister from Brisbane. "I guess he wouldn't have let me stop ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... be exact it is a low haunt. I always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion, and says that now he cannot bring himself ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... Louis Burjois, and dis is de brudder of dat gal wot you see walkin' over dere. She is an innercent gal, which dat feller is a-tollin' of her off. He's a pickpocket, and I'm one wot kin swear to it. We want him arrested an' jugged. We'll see to ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... Hind laigs at res'." The Wildcat subsided to the floor. "Fingehs, lemme see kin you play de pickpocket jazz. Shoots five dollahs. Wham! Ah reads a feeble five. Five stay alive. Five Ah craves. Lady Luck, boon me. P'odigal five, come home whah de fat calf waits. Bam! Th'ee an' a deuce. Ah lets it lay. Shoots ten dollahs. Shower ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... first refused; but she knelt down by my side, and instead of praying to the saint prayed to me; and, being thus treated as a canonized personage, I thought it incumbent on me to be gracious to the extent of half a paul. My wife, some time ago, came in contact with a pickpocket at the entrance of a church; and, failing in his enterprise upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving fingers in the holy water, and paid his devotions at a shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... immediately, because on his gracious Majesty's accession Doctor Crusius gave his boys a holiday? He and I, and Hetty, and Theo (Miss Theo was strong enough to walk many a delightful mile now), heard the Heralds proclaim his new Majesty before Savile House in Leicester Fields, and a pickpocket got the watch and chain of a gentleman hard by us, and was caught and carried to Bridewell, all on account of his Majesty's accession. Had the king not died, the gentleman would not have been in the crowd; the chain would not have been seized; the thief would ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the idea struck me to drop a few into Fred's overcoat pockets. Without discovery I put what I washed into one, and was about slipping my porte-monnaie into the other, when my hand was caught with such a grip that I screamed right out. At the same time Fred exclaimed, 'Here is a pickpocket!' And of course there was a policeman there, as none was needed. I was too frightened to speak for an instant. At length I found voice enough to say to the officer, who was making his way toward me, 'The gentleman will find he is ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden

... Botany Bay, the account of a whole nation exerting itself to floor the government-house. Yet time shall come, when some Botany Bay Tacitus shall record the crimes of an emperor lineally descended from a London pickpocket."[63] ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... at Doc's "conscience." Yet, to my notion, they, who started high and from whatever sophistry of motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far than they who began deep in the mire and have been struggling bravely toward the surface. I know a man who was born in the slums, was a pickpocket at eight years of age, was a boss at forty-five, administering justice according to his lights. I know a man who was born what he calls a gentleman and who, at forty-five, sold himself for the "honors" of a high office. And once, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is, of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... pockets of the coat like an amateur pickpocket, and found some letters. He gazed at them askance, turning them over and over, wondering if he ought to peep at their contents. Then he put them back, and went into the smoking-room, where, finding himself alone, he turned up his vest as if it had been worn by somebody ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... additional safeguard," he had assured her. "It corresponds to the method of a notorious Paris assassin who was very generally regarded by the police as a cunning pickpocket. Kazmah's business of 'dreamreading' does not actually come within the Act. He is clever enough for that. Remember, he does not profess to tell fortunes. It also enables him to balk ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... royalist; she once took two hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she died in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, a traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of doing business, so general as to attract attention. If you do not take a hack at the impertinent solicitation of the driver, he will unquestionably curse you." "The telegraph operator grabs your message and eyes you as if you were a pickpocket." Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO does not offer himself as an apologist for the abusive and obstreperous hackman, but he wishes to say that in the course of his active and eventful career he has had various ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... That doctrine suits 'em best; just like a cowardly pickpocket, or a bloody highwayman, knock a man down first, and then tell him ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... brother officer in France as that of a man who gave a good price for jewels without asking too many questions. But the diamond merchant had not lived up to his reputation. He had refused to look at the diamond. He had been horribly rude, treating him as though he was a pickpocket, and had practically ordered him out of his office. In fact, his whole attitude was so suspicious that Nepcote decided it would be better to leave his gambling debts owing than run the risk of trying to raise money on a married woman's jewels. He returned to the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... license to prove it, and of course she realized her breach of promise suit and claim for a million dollars' worth of heart balm would be laughed out of court if she had the crust to present it. So she did the next best thing. She abused me like a pickpocket and ended up by getting hysterical when I told her how I'd swindled her. When she got through crying I lectured her on the error of her ways and suggested that inasmuch as she had had one divorce already, another wouldn't be much of a strain ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... abuse me like a pickpocket, and I should return it, and then there would be a scolding match. I always have kept out of her way, and I think I had better ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... Board of Assessors comes with poor grace from those whose endeavors for the common good are confined to academic essays on good government. It savors too much of the adroit pickpocket, who, finding himself hard pressed, joins in the chase, shouting as lustily as any of the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... Hefflefinger slipped over the cross rails on which he had been lying, hung for an instant by his hands, and then dropped into the centre of the fighting mob on the floor. He was out of it in an instant with the agility of a pickpocket, was across the room and at Hade's throat like a dog. The murderer, for the moment, was the calmer man ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... ye Havana cigarette smokers! and when next you indulge in a whiff from your favourite luxury, remember that a pickpocket has had his hand ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... what the profession is always observing. No sooner do they return from one circuit than they start off on another. Are you aware, Mr. Bumpkin, that we pay a judge five thousand a-year to try a pickpocket?" ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... man who indirectly buys the seat, and hear his record of dull misery if he is inclined to be confidential. He does not like to leave Parliament, and yet he knows he is merely a mark for the licensed pickpocket; he is not regarded as a politician—he is a donor of sundry subscriptions, and nothing more. The men in manufacturing centres will return a poor politician and pay his expenses; but the people in some quiet towns ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart's discharge. These dates coincide with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and finally he became a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girl with whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill She belonged to Ecclefechan, which Haggart more than ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... six valuable gold watches, three in the various pockets of his waist-coat, one in his ticket-pocket, one in his breast-pocket, and one small one set in a leather strap and fastened round his left wrist. The obvious explanation that the man was a pickpocket, and that this was his plunder, was discounted by the fact that all six were of American make and of a type which is rare in England. Three of them bore the mark of the Rochester Watchmaking Company; one was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... connected. He was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was not particularly against him; his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy which would enable him to submit ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... but thefts and robbery are seldom heard of. The rich returns of honest labor render harmless temptations which would prove an overmatch for the average virtue of New England. The cut-purse and pickpocket in California find their occupation useless, and become chevaliers of industry, in a better sense than the term has ever before admitted of. It will appear natural," says our author, "that California should be the most democratic country in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... is Louis Burjois, and dis is de brudder of dat gal wot you see walkin' over dere. She is an innercent gal, which dat feller is a-tollin' of her off. He's a pickpocket, and I'm one wot kin swear to it. We want him arrested an' jugged. We'll see to ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... What are you thinking of? There is no time! She has lost two years, as it is. You don't seem to remember, Michael, that I am as good a pickpocket as there is in Europe. That child is almost too old to begin to learn the art. The other one, Rika, is just about right; and she has such fine, delicate, little fingers. Well, this one has good hands too. But you know well that they are clumsy after they reach five. Do you remember ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston



Words linked to "Pickpocket" :   thief, stealer



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