shoplift

present singular third person shoplifts · participle present shoplifting · participle past shoplifted · past shoplifted · alternative shop-lift

1. transitiveTo steal something from a shop or store during business hours, usually by means of hiding merchandise.

   She taught Maddy to sing in Portuguese, to shoplift mascara, to play a drinking game called Spoons

   2004 May 17, Andrew Sean Greer, The New Yorker

   1 more example

   Week after week, racist posts appear on Thee Rant, a blog for current or former New York City police officers: African Americans are called “apes;” a retired officer says one of the blessings of retirement is not having to work the Puerto Rican Day parade, with its “old obese tatted up women stuffed into outfits that they purchased or shoplifted at the local Kmart store; […]

   2015 April 19, Joaquin Sapien, “"The worst elements of the department": New York cop blog is home to some of the most vile racism on the Internet”, in Salon

2. intransitiveTo steal from shops / stores during trading hours.

   1969 October, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Mechanisms for Exploiting the Black Community, Negro Digest, 22, Thus, the teacher shook down the kids, the big kids shook down the little kids, the little kids shoplifted to get money, etc., etc.

   2 more examples

   Once, before we had juvenile court here, I made the mistake of putting on probation a boy who had shoplifted, a boy of good family. That boy later shot a man.

   1938 April, William Peery, “Thank Rotary!”, in The Rotarian, page 52

   In other words, New York is a better place to shoplift.

   2002 November 25, The New Yorker

plural shoplifts

1. obsoleteA shoplifter.

   1704, John Dunton, The Athenian Oracle, Athenian Society, Volume III, page 67, […] and indeed it seems a Hardſhip in our Laws, that a poor Shoplift ſhou′d be hang′d for breaking in and pilfering a few Goods, […] .