Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who habitually violates laws, especially laws that do not involve serious criminal offenses.

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

  • noun One who habitually violates minor laws or fails to answer trivial court summonses (such as parking tickets).
  • noun An iconoclast.

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

  • noun one who habitually ignores the law and does not answer court summonses

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Coined simultaneously by Mr Henry Irving Dale and Miss Kate L. Butler for a contest held in Boston in 1923 in which a word for "a lawless drinker of illegally made or illegally obtained liquor" was sought during the Prohibition era.

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