heist
Americannoun
-
heists
plural
verb (used with object)
-
heists,
present (3rd person singular)
-
heisted,
past participle, past
-
heisting
present participle
-
to take unlawfully, especially in a robbery or holdup; steal.
to heist a million dollars' worth of jewels.
-
to rob or hold up.
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
heistsimple
-
heistssimple
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have heistedperfect
-
has heistedperfect
-
am heistingprogressive
-
are heistingprogressive
-
is heistingprogressive
-
have been heistingperfect progressive
-
has been heistingperfect progressive
Past
-
heistedsimple
-
had heistedperfect
-
was heistingprogressive
-
were heistingprogressive
-
had been heistingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of heist
1925–30, alteration of hoist
Explanation
When a man with a gun walks into a bank and says, "Give me all your money," that's a heist or a robbery at gunpoint. Heist, pronounced "hīst," is a slang word for an armed robbery. It's also a slang word used to describe the act of stealing or breaking into someone's house to steal their stuff. In other words, it's a burglary. Heist can also act as a verb: "If you've heisted a diamond ring, you've stolen it."
Vocabulary lists containing heist
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Six of Crows
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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.
See Examples For:
It is the latest high profile heist on a European museum.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
Hence her latest caper, which begins with a mission to track down a vintage desk and turns on a dime into a heist tied to a cache of gold.
From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026
Colson Whitehead’s latest foray into the bent world of “reluctant fence” Ray Carney — “Cool Machine,” the third and final installment of his Harlem Trilogy — is an American epic disguised as a heist novel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
The Apollo Gallery of Paris's Louvre Museum, where French crown jewels worth 88 million euros were stolen in 2025 in a brazen heist, will reopen to the public on Wednesday.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
Right now he was posing as the Egyptian detective assigned to gather information about the museum heist the chameleon himself had pulled off in the first chapter.
From "A Tangle of Knots" by Lisa Graff
The heists have prompted calls for better security to protect valuable artworks.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
"She would do anything for her family - and she joins them as a way to protect them from themselves and the real danger that is involved in heists."
From BBC ● Feb. 9, 2026
Collectors and shop owners have little doubt there’s a link between some heists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2026
The rest of Europe has seen four known museum heists over the past year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 13, 2025
She wasn’t investigating the jewelry heists and grave robbing I’d read about in the newspapers.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
The culprit: the big internet and social media platforms that grab news outlets’ work without paying for it and build their own ad programs around the heisted articles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2024
The saga of Kelly’s heisted honeybees would rattle the beekeeper and the clients who sought his specially bred bees.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 13, 2021
The interface for the Archive looks like a set of old file cabinets that might have been heisted from an old-time bail bondsman’s office.
From New York Times ● Aug. 20, 2019
During the latter stages of the LP’s production, the Beatles famously heisted one of EMI Studios’ experimental eight-track machines and produced several tracks with that more expansive sound palette.
From Salon ● Nov. 9, 2018
The lid was heisted, and mighty well it was.
From Successful Recitations by Alfred H. (Alfred Henry) Miles
The instrumental track "You Wish" beautifully invokes the spirit of Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower" without ever wholesale heisting the original.
From Time Magazine Archive
In fact, heisting Manhattan turns out to be less farfetched than it sounds.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
