yegg

plural yeggs · alternative yeg

1. slangcantA person who breaks open safes; a burglar.

   1904, Edwin S. Porter (director), Capture of the ‘Yegg’ Bank Burglars

   3 more examples

   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

   ‘These racketeers are a new type. We think about them the way we think about old time yeggs or needled-up punks.’

   1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 265

   Finally, a yegg—a safecracker—gave White and his team the name of another witness to the bombing plot: Asa Kirby, a gold-toothed outlaw who had been an associate of Grammer’s. The yegg said that Kirby was the “soup man”—the expert in explosives—who had designed the bomb.

   2021 (originally published 2017, adapted 2021), David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Younger Readers, page 150

   Synonyms: safecracker, yeggman

present singular third person yeggs · participle present yegging · participle past yegged · past yegged · alternative yeg

1. slangTo rob.

   The bookmakers were yegged as they left the track in the era of the hand-books.

   1956, Ian Fleming, chapter 10, in Diamonds Are Forever