Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A thief who steals by the aid of a sliding panel, a secret door, or any similar device; a robber in a panel-house.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President—though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities—even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

    General Suffrage, Elections, &c. Notes Left Over 1892

  • We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President -- though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities -- even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

    Notes Left Over ; from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose 1855

  • We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President -- though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities -- even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

    Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy Walt Whitman 1855

  • Thus, proud and happy Mother, might _your_ boy have been a defaced and distorted being, kicked, cuffed, knotted with frost, blackened with bruises; a pick-pocket, a wharf-rat, a panel-thief; with his intellect sharpened to an intense and impish cunning -- only knowing that it is a hard world, and he must get out of it what he can.

    Humanity in the City 1847

Comments

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  • n. A thief who steals by the aid of a sliding panel, a secret door, or any similar device; a robber in a panel house. Lackluster definition at panel-house. It's frustrating when words such as panelhouse, panel house, and panel-house all have different meanings or no meaning. 

    July 27, 2015