Dictionary

cracksman en · NOUN

Etymology

From crack + -s- + -man.

Meanings

1. (archaic, informal) A burglar or safebreaker.
   • The fraudulent clerk and the flash “cracksman” interchanged experiences. 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 52:
   • The bank cracksmen who looted the national bank at Northampton were traced by a piece of wrapping paper picked up in an abandoned schoolhouse. 1916, Melville Davisson Post, “The Man Hunters”, in The Saturday Evening Post:
   • She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven, burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp. 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 2:

Forms