Dictionary

rogues' gallery en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio
• /ɹəʊɡz ˈɡæl(ə)ɹi/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ɹoʊɡz ˈɡæl(ə)ɹi/ (General-American)
• (General-American) audio

Etymology

From rogues (“plural of rogue (‘rascal, scoundrel’)”) + -' + gallery, popularized by the American detectives Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) and Thomas F. Byrnes (1842–1910).

Meanings

1. (historical) A set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals used in law enforcement investigations to help witnesses identify suspects.
   • Winsor's story is that while on the cars near Rochester in May last he was arrested on the charge of being one of a gang which had robbed a Mr. French of $10 on the train. He was dragged out of the car to various Police stations, and his portrait was taken for the Rogues' Gallery. […] Winsor now sues to recover $10,000 damages. 1877 October 5, “A man arrested on a train”, in The New-York Times, volume XXVII, number 8132, New York, N.Y.: Raymond, Jones & Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3, column 2:
   • Inspector [Thomas F.] Byrnes, of New York city, has his criminal record in his great history of the noted crooks of the present day. Ward's striking face, with its long white beard, is conspicuous in the principal rogues' galleries of this country and Europe. 1892 April 6, “A life spent in jail. Charlie Ward a criminal since his sixteenth year.”, in Lowell Daily Courier, Lowell, Mass.: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 6, column 2:
   • And he took from his pocket the photograph loaned him from the Rogues' Gallery, the one backed, No. 989, Billy Hickman, alias "Handsome Billy, alias Calvin, burglar, A1 at the business." 1879 March 29, S. A. MacKeever, “The Phanton Friend; or, The Mystery of the Devil’s Pool. A Romance of New York City. Chapter XVI. A Groom Wanted.”, in The National Police Gazette, volume XXXIV, number 79, New York, N.Y.: Richard K[yle] Fox, page 14, column 1:
   • Look through the pictures in the Rogues' Gallery and see how many rascals you find there who resemble the best people in the country. […] By the by, that is no uncommon occurrence, and the more you consider it the more readily you will come to appreciate how easy it is for a detective to pick up the wrong man. 1886, Thomas [Francis?] Byrnes, “Why Thieves are Photographed”, in Professional Criminals of America, New York, N.Y.: Cassell & Company, […], →OCLC, page 55:
   • "Recognize these people?" Dutch asked, pointing to the rogues' gallery. I nodded. "All of 'em. Cutthroats to the man." 1984, William Diehl, “The Cincinnati Triad”, in Hooligans, New York, N.Y.: Villard Books, →ISBN, page 43:
   • Near-synonym: lineup
   • If there is good reason [for the police] to suspect him, they take his picture before they let him go, and then they tell him that he must be very careful and behave well, for they have his picture, and will remember him if he does not. Then they put the picture up in the rogues' gallery among the others, where everybody who comes there can see it. 1866, “Readings for the Young: The Rogues’ Gallery”, in The Christian Treasury […], Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter, & Co.; London: Groombridge & Sons, →OCLC, page 323:
2. (broadly) A group of people having the same (usually disreputable) characteristics.
   • The old staple of every demonstration: gully gully may shor hai, Congress Party chor hai – the cry goes up in every alley, Congress Party is a rogues' gallery – was very much in evidence. 1991, Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (A Borzoi Book), 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →ISBN, page 325:
   • For more than a decade, [Abdul Qadeer] Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, masterminded a vast, clandestine and hugely profitable enterprise whose mission boiled down to this: selling to a rogues' gallery of nations the technology and equipment to make nuclear weapons. 2006 February 6, “The Man who Sold the Bomb”, in Time, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 Sep 2009:
   • By 1859, D. Morier Evans was exhibiting [George] Hudson as the principal character in his rogues' gallery entitled "Facts, Failures and Frauds"; and at the hands of modern economic historians he has been written down as a common swindler. 1951 December, Michael Robbins, “John Francis’s ‘History of the English Railway’”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 800:
   • In 1919, when Charles E. White began the task of collecting a sort of rogues' gallery of the measurements and family particularities of all makes and models of revolvers and pistols, in the hope of better identification of bullets in murder cases, it seemed a relatively simple enterprise. 1925 June 20, Wesley W. Stout, “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Silent Witness”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 197, number 51, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 18, column 1:
3. (broadly) A set of supervillains associated with a particular superhero franchise.
   • It is still perhaps the most important decade in Spider-Man's comic book career. The 1960s not only saw the birth of the fabled wall-crawler himself, but they also ushered in one of the greatest rogues galleries in the history of comic books. 2012, Matthew K. Manning, Tom DeFalco, “The 1960s”, in Spider-Man: Inside the World of Your Friendly Neighborhood Hero, New York, N.Y.: DK Publishing, →ISBN, page 56:
   • Both shows have huge, larger-than-life rogues' galleries, unforgettable core casts, and, of course, those banger theme songs. 2024 November, Ed Brisson, quotee, “Dynamite Dispatch: Writer Ed Brisson Reflects on the Action-filled Future of the Silverhawks!”, in Joe Casey, Jonny Quest, volume 1, number 4, Mt. Laurel, N.J.: Dynamite Entertainment, →OCLC, column 2:

Forms

Relateds

murderers' row

Synonyms

lineup

Translations (5)

fi konnagalleria (group of people having the same (usually disreputable) characteristics) · fi konnagalleria (set of supervillains associated with a particular superhero franchise) · ar معرض المحتالين (set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals used in law enforcement investigations to help witnesses identify suspects) · fi konnagalleria (set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals used in law enforcement investigations to help witnesses identify suspects) · ja ローグ・ギャラリー (set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals used in law enforcement investigations to help witnesses identify suspects)

wikipedia: Allan Pinkerton · wikipedia: New York City Police Department · wikipedia: Thomas F. Byrnes