smash and grab

plural smash and grabs

1. attributivecountableoftenuncountableA method of robbery where a glass installation of a shop or other establishment is smashed and items are grabbed as quickly as possible without much concern.

   a smash and grab raid

2. attributivebroadlycountableoftenuncountableAn act of theft, appropriation, or other form of gaining advantage at another's expense that is done quickly and audaciously.

   Kenneth Saltman (2007a) has argued we are living in an era of “smash-and-grab” privatization.

   2015, Kristen L. Buras, Jim Randels, & Kalamu ya Salaam, Pedagogy, Policy, and the Privatized City, →ISBN

   5 more examples

   Aggiss and Cowie are smash and grab artists, eclectically borrowing from a range of different dance and performance styles and making them into their own inimitable blended form.

   2006, Liz Aggiss, Billy Cowie, Anarchic Dance, →ISBN, page 5

   My biggest regret is that such a broad and eclectic approach, while in important respects appropriate for a foray into only partly charted territory, inevitably means that I treat some fascinating literatures in a 'smash and grab' manner—I do not do justice to their intrinsic complexity or subtlety.

   2012, Christopher Pollitt, New Perspectives on Public Services, →ISBN, page x

   His career has been interpreted over the last century or more as being symptomatic of a wide range of forces thought to be at work in al-Andalus in his day, ranging from sheer smash and grab brigandage to incipient Hispanic nationalism, and from the alienation of indigenous neo-Muslims to a last gasp resistance on the part of a dwindling Christian minority trying to preserve their culture from total extinction.

   2012, Roger Collins, Caliphs and Kings: Spain, 796-1031, →ISBN

   What Campbell calls the politics of smash and grab lambasted the sexism of the industrial workers and laid bare the shoddy treatment of women, hidden by images of women's heroic attempts to support their men and communities through the long and bitter industrial struggles of the early 1980s.

   2012, Valerie Walkerdine, Luis Jimenez, Gender, Work and Community After De-Industrialisation, →ISBN, page 162

   Arsenal were desolate but it would have been a real smash-and-grab had they hung on for three points after Liverpool showed most of the ambition and moments of quality in a game high on drama but short on class.

   2014 December 21, Phil McNulty, “Liverpool 2 - 2 Arsenal”, in BBC Sport

present singular third person smashes and grabs · participle present smashing and grabbing · participle past smashed and grabbed · past smashed and grabbed

1. To perform a smash and grab.