Dictionary

burglaress en · NOUN

Etymology

From burglar + -ess.

Meanings

1. (dated, rare) A female burglar.
   • Along with ethnic diversity came the initial wave of lock-picking and safe-cracking burglaresses. The first female mob bosses had begun ruling their streets with an iron fist, buying, selling, and even marrying their way up the violently masculine hierarchy of the Japanese underworld. 1994, Peter Constantine, “Crawling”, in Japanese Slang: Uncensored, North Clarendon, Vt.: Tuttle Publishing, published 2003 (5th printing), →ISBN, chapter 1 (Japanese Thieves), pages 22–23:
   • But in men these virtues are comparatively unimportant, and the one supreme and cardinal virtue of a Ceres man is that he should never have had the tip of his nose touched by a woman. A man with an untouched nose may be proud, arrogant, and cruel, and yet be admired; but a man who is known to have had the tip of his nose touched by a woman is sent to associate with murderesses and burglaresses, and despised even by them. 1902 March 20, R. B. Kerr, “A Strange Custom”, in M[oses] Harman, editor, Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, volume VI (Third Series), number 10 (909 overall), Chicago, Ill.: M. Harman, →OCLC, page 73, column 2:
   • The last three months of my stay in San Francisco I cut out all the pictures of pretty girls from three newspapers. They included all kinds of women—society, club, athletic, college, high-brow, low-brow; highway-women, burglaresses, forgeresses and murderesses. 1916 February, Inez Haynes Gillmore, “The Californiacs”, in Charles K[ellogg] Field, editor, Sunset, the Pacific Monthly, San Francisco, Calif.: Woodhead, Field & Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 60, column 2:

Forms

Hypernyms

thiefess