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- Mining obscure words of yore can turn up some good insults, and ganef is one of them. Ganef —also styled as gonif and goniff —has been in use in English since the late 1830s. It's a Yiddish borrowing, and originally comes from the Hebrew word gannābh, meaning "thief." It may be applied to thieves of any kind.
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The origins of Cant/Argot, also known as Thieves Slang, can be traced back centuries. Formed as a chimera language, a polyglot many headed beast, it takes its influences from Persia, India and even Anglo Saxon England.
Jun 28, 2017 · If you were a thief in 1700s England, and wanted to tell a fellow thief that you had spotted a naive rich man (“rum cully”) and you can’t wait to rob his house (“heave the booth”), but you...
- Natalie Zarrelli
Apr 3, 2013 · Considering the meaning of the word thief, it could come into existence as slang. Perhaps that is how thieves once called themselves, but with time the word gained respectability and became part of the Standard.
- Victorian Pickpocket Slang: Flashing The Patter
- A Case That Made The Papers
- The Origins of Patter Flash
- Thieves in London in The 18th and 19th Centuries
- Pick-Pocket Techniques in England
- Droppers: Another Sort of Thief
- Stealing from Stores: Dobing Lay
- Dog Nippers: Restoring “Lost” Dogs, For A Profit
- Anglers: Fishing For Stolen Goods
- Rough Stuff: Thieves Who Used Violence
“Draw dragons from the dummy!” The preceding sentence probably makes no sense to the majority of English-speaking people, which was precisely the point behind Patter Flash, the language used by thieves and pickpockets in 19th-century England. A rough translation of the phrase above would be, “Steal gold coins from the coin purse!” Thieves in Englan...
London streets were dark and crowded in the 1860s—the perfect stage for stalking and robbing a victim. A particularly harrowing type of robbery was called garroting—the pickpocket would partially strangle a victim in order to steal valuables from their person. In 1862, one such case made the “penny dreadfuls” (the newspapers). Mr. Hugh Pilkington, ...
The language of thieves is quite old, and many of the words used by London pickpockets were also used by rogues in New York City and in many other cities with organized crime. According to George Matsell, author of The Secret Language of Crime: Vocabulum or the Rogue's Lexicon (1859), the language originated from wandering bands of Gypsiesin Europe...
There was no place too sacred for pickpockets to lurk—in 1735, a large group of pickpockets (known as a battalion) burst into a Whitechapel church during a funeral service and shouted, "Fire!" The ensuing chaos of escaping mourners created a windfall for the pickpockets. Public executions were another favorite among pick-pockets.Executions could ga...
A pickpocket was also known as a "file" in the language of thieves. The file was usually accompanied by two other conspirators: one called the Adam Tyler, and the other called the bulker (or staller). The threesome generally worked as follows: the bulker would push up against the unsuspecting person, and the file would reach into the pocket and gra...
Dropping was another way to steal money. These thieves usually took advantage of charitable individuals by dropping a pocketbook full of fake money near an unsuspecting person. The thief would rush up and pretend to “find” the coin purse. The thief would get the victim to buy the coin purse—the victim would not realize the pocket book contained cou...
Stealing from stores required two thieves: one thief would ask the store owner about an item that was either at the back of the store or in a far-off corner. While the merchant was occupied by the first thief, the second thief would steal money or goods from the store. When this tactic was used, it was called a dobing lay.
Some thieves would steal dogs from local neighborhoods—when a reward was offered, the dog nipper would show up with the “lost” dog and take the reward money.
Anglers were small-time thieves who would literally fish for stolen items by placing a hook on the end of a pole. These thieves would use the fishing pole to steal from windows, doors, or any other entrance to a store or home.
One sort of thief was called a bludgeoner. Bludgeoners often recruited well-dressed women to pretend to be their wives—the woman playing this role would get a man to follow her to an isolated place by flirting with him. Once the two of them were alone, she would slyly rob the man of any valuable items. As soon as this was done, she would give a sig...
Mining obscure words of yore can turn up some good insults, and ganef is one of them. Ganef—also styled as gonif and goniff—has been in use in English since the late 1830s. It's a Yiddish borrowing, and originally comes from the Hebrew word gannābh, meaning "thief." It may be applied to thieves of any kind.
May 18, 2014 · Slang fails on caring, sharing and compassion but it does a good insult. Modernity lacks the 18th Century's excellent "you are a thief and a murderer: you have killed a baboon and stolen his...
In the 1740s, slang first crystallizes into a word with a very specific context and a distinctive range of related meanings, emerging as a word chiefly found in reports of the speech of an underclass of thieves, and beggars, and the itinerants who often associated with them and shared much of the same vocabulary.
