Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A pickpocket.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A thief who steals from others' purses or pockets in public.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. One who cuts purses for the sake of stealing them or their contents (an act common when men wore purses fastened by a string to their girdles); one who steals from the person; a pickpocket.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One who cuts purses for the sake of stealing their contents (a practice said to have been common when men wore purses at their girdles); hence, a pickpocket.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. a thief who steals from the pockets or purses of others in public places
Etymologies
Examples
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The meaning of the term cutpurse was a lot clearer.
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I was not long ago in England, and witnessed there the hanging of one Elizabeth Evans–Canberry Bess, they called her–a notorious murderer and cutpurse, who was taken with her partner, one Thomas Shearwood.
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Thirteen-year-old Alan Dale, only son of a poor widow, scrapes a meagre living as a thief and cutpurse in and around the busy town of Nottingham.
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You, whose conscience is too delicate to continue as a cutpurse, threaten to turn assassin?
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In which the two brothers cooperate, Gideon resumes his career as a cutpurse, and Tempest House plays host to some unexpected visitors
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She imagined the explanatory notes: Tended by a maid and a reformed cutpurse, an aristocrat recovers from a dislocated shoulder inflicted on him by a time-traveling henchman.
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You do not do justice to your reputation as a cutpurse.
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A murderer and a villain, A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord, a vice of kings, a cutpurse ... '
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Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him now; a bawd, a cutpurse.
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Another man in tan appeared, his truncheon smacked the cutpurse across the temple, and the youth went to his knees.
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