pickpocket
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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to steal (a wallet, money, etc.) in the manner of a pickpocket.
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to steal from (a person) in the manner of a pickpocket.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pickpocket
Explanation
A pickpocket is a criminal who steals things from people's pockets or bags. Your grandmother might warn you to be on the lookout for pickpockets when you travel to Paris. Pickpockets take advantage of crowded situations to slide wallets, phones, and cash out of victims' pockets, and when they do this, you can say that they pickpocket. Probably the most famous literary pickpocket is Charles Dickens' character The Artful Dodger, from "Oliver Twist." Before pickpocket was coined, around 1590, they were called pick-purses, for obvious reasons.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
When the time came, it was the “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,” starring John Turturro as a sleight-of-hand artist struggling to stay solvent when fewer marks carry cash.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2026
Google/Android is the World’s Biggest Pickpocket Consider the overwhelming evidence from those that deal with Google.
From Forbes • Dec. 9, 2011
Pickpocket incidents in the year up to November 1 were up to 3,020 this year from 2,509 in the same period of 2010.
From Reuters • Nov. 8, 2011
In Kobe, Japan, when Pickpocket Yoshio Abe complained of a stomachache, police gave him a dose of castor oil, recovered the stolen watch he had swallowed.
From Time Magazine Archive
Whitey had a good claimer named Pickpocket that caught Johnson’s eye; Whitey was equally enamored of Woolf’s riding.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
