light-fingered
adjEtymology From light (“not heavy”, adjective) + fingered (“having fingers”, adjective).
1
Having quick, light and nimble fingers.
2
Figuratively Having nimble fingers, especially for stealing or picking pockets (pickpocketing), given to thievery or shoplifting.
- There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; […] yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.1848 June 28, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Before the Curtain”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], →OCLC, page vii:
- Synonyms
- furacious, light-fingered, sticky-fingered, theftuous, thievish
- Derived terms
- light-fingeredness
- Hyponyms
- kleptomaniacal, piratical