yegg

English

Alternative forms

• yeg

Etymology

Origin unknown.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /jɛɡ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (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 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 2:

     She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected 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

• safecracker, yeggman

Translations

a person who breaks open safes; a burglar

• Czech: kasař (cs) m
• Finnish: murtovaras (fi), kassakaappimurtaja
• Hungarian: kasszafúró (hu)
• Polish: kasiarz (pl) m pers
• Russian: взло́мщик (ru) m (vzlómščik)

Verb

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

1. (slang) To rob.
   • 1956, Ian Fleming, chapter 10, in Diamonds Are Forever:

     The bookmakers were yegged as they left the track in the era of the hand-books.

References

• “yegg”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Jonathon Green (2024) “yegg n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• Jonathon Green (2024) “yegg v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Anagrams

• eggy