robber
Americannoun
Usage
What does robber mean? A robber is a person who robs—steals, especially by force or through threats of violence. In other words, a robber is someone who commits robbery. A robber can rob a person or a place, such as a house or business. A robber who robs a person on the street is often called a mugger. A person who robs a bank is called a bank robber and the act of doing this is called bank robbery. An armed robber is a person who commits armed robbery, which involves robbing a person or place while armed with a weapon. A robber is a kind of thief, which is a person who steals things. However, the word thief usually refers to a person who steals without anyone noticing, at least not when the theft is taking place. In contrast, a person who steals by using force, violence, or threats of force or violence would more likely be called a robber. The word rob can also be used in a kind of figurative way meaning to unfairly deprive someone of something, but robber is only used to refer to someone who robs in the literal sense. Example: Police have released sketches of the suspects in the hopes that someone can identify the bank robbers.
Synonym Usage
See thief.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of robber
First recorded in 1125–75; Middle English robbere, from Old French robere. See rob, -er 1
Explanation
A robber is someone who steals from another person. A bank robber might steal money from a teller by claiming to have a gun, while a robber baron is much more subtle. Robbery is the crime that robbers commit, taking someone's property or money by hurting them or threatening to hurt them. You might picture train robbers in an old Western movie, galloping away with their loot shooting their guns in the air. In the nineteenth century, Americans began using the term "robber baron" to mean wealthy, unscrupulous businessmen.
Vocabulary lists containing robber
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:
As early as 1859 the New York Times associated Cornelius Vanderbilt with the idea of the medieval robber baron, thus tarnishing the image of the country’s biggest shipowner.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 2026
In 2007, he was given a police award for bravery after tackling a robber who was attacking a delivery man with a baseball bat.
From BBC ● Feb. 28, 2026
Ours is a history in which New York robber barons used the promise of belonging to splinter the poor into factions and manipulate them into fighting among themselves during the Gilded Age.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 24, 2026
This was the age of robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil was a business “trust” comprising dozens of companies in numerous vertically linked industries.
From Barron's ● Jan. 13, 2026
Hazel was confident she could produce enough gems and gold to impress even the greediest robber.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
It’s a case about how cops use peoples’ private digital data to catch robbers.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
On the available training data, "we average less than one percent errors," Van Calster said -- although "there's a kind of cops and robbers race that's never going to stop" as the fakers' technology improves.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
Until then, we’ll have to endure him playing a few more rounds of cops and robbers.
From Salon ● May 27, 2026
When they took his hat, he pleaded for its return, and the robbers eventually tossed it back.
From Science Daily ● May 7, 2026
“So that grave robbers won’t try to steal all of my jewels.”
From "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer
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.
