Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A short crowbar, especially as used by burglars: often made in sections, so as to be carried without discovery. Also jimmy.
  • noun A great-coat.
  • noun plural A kind of woolen cloth.
  • noun A sort of boot of fine make.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Slang, Eng. Spruce.
  • noun Chiefly Brit. A short crowbar. See jimmy.
  • noun Slang, Eng. A baked sheep's head.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective archaic spruce
  • noun A crowbar, particularly one used by burglars. (US: jimmy)
  • noun archaic, UK, slang A baked sheep's head.
  • noun Australia, slang An immigrant
  • verb To open with a crowbar.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a short crowbar

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He then provided the usual implements: plenty of false keys, a strong crow-bar, technically called a jemmy, an instrument used for cleaning bricks, some spirits and a slight provision of bread and meat.

    Ralph Rashleigh 2004

  • If a man is found by the police busy with "jemmy" and dark lantern at a jeweller's shop door over night, the magistrate before whom he is brought the next morning, reasons from those effects to their causes in the fellow's "burglarious" ideas and volitions, with perfect confidence, and punishes him accordingly.

    Hume (English Men of Letters Series) Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

  • The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked 'jemmy' line, or the fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it.

    Sketches by Boz, illustrative of everyday life and every-day people Charles Dickens 1841

  • Devon and Cornwall Police has said it is investigating claims that officers illegally tried to "jemmy" the locked door with their metal batons after one of them dropped their phone in the back of the car during a search.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010

  • "jemmy" the police said when the wound, with the wounds upon the forehead, had been examined beneath a microscope.

    The Four Faces A Mystery William Le Queux 1895

  • Now, "says he, leaning close," I'll lay odds the Holnup will come through the garden in the dead watch, around four, lay out the sentry quietly, jemmy the door, then upstairs and good-night Franz-Josef, all hail Crown Prince Rudolf!

    Watershed 2010

  • Will the "Brownites" risk using a jemmy to get him out if he is reluctant to go?

    Tony Blair: It's Nearly All Over 2006

  • Then he began to deal out his drolleries, such as would make the dismallest jemmy guffaw, and gave vent to all manner of buffooneries; but the Caliph laughed not neither smiled, whereat

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Where would be all this fine crockery work for your breakfast? you might pop your head under a pump, or drink out of your own paw; what would you do for that fine jemmy tye?

    Cecilia 2008

  • The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the fire – wood and hearth – stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteen – pence or thereabouts: and he and his family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it.

    Sketches by Boz 2007

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