yegg

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Origin unknown.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /jɛɡ/
  • (file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛɡ

Noun

yegg (plural yeggs)

  1. (cant, slang) A person who breaks open safes; a burglar.
    • 1904, Edwin S. Porter (director), Capture of the ‘Yegg’ Bank Burglars
    • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, “Accessary after the Fact”, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, →OCLC, page 51:
      She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought 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.
    • 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 265:
      ‘These racketeers are a new type. We think about them the way we think about old time yeggs or needled-up punks.’

Synonyms

Translations

Verb

yegg (third-person singular simple present yeggs, present participle yegging, simple past and past participle yegged)

  1. (slang) To rob.

References

Anagrams

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