filch

The Fortune Teller (c. 1630) by Georges de la Tour, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, USA. The painting depicts a wealthy young man having his fortune read by a gypsy fortune teller (right), while unaware that his coin purse is being filched from his pocket (left) and a medal he is wearing is being cut from its chain (centre).

From Middle English filchen (“to pilfer, to steal”). The further origin of the word is uncertain, but it is perhaps related to Old English fylċian (“to marshal troops”) and Old English ġefylċe (“band of men, army, host”), which would make it related to folk.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: fĭlch, IPA^(key): /fɪltʃ/
• Rhymes: -ɪltʃ

filch (third-person singular simple present filches, present participle filching, simple past and past participle filched)

1. (transitive) To illegally take possession of (especially items of low value); to pilfer, to steal.

   Hey, someone filched my wallet!

   • 1593, Tho[mas] Nashe, “The Arrainment and Execution of the Third Letter”, in The Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse. Or, Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters: […], Printed at London: By Iohn Danter, […], OCLC 222196160; republished as John Payne Collier, editor, Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters […] (Miscellaneous Tracts; Temp. Eliz. and Jac. I), [London: s.n., 1870], OCLC 906587369, page 46:

     You would foiſt in non cauſam pro cauſa ["I do not bring into question"], have it thought your flight from your olde companions, obſcuritie and ſilence, was onely, with Æneas, to carry your father on your backe through the fire of ſlaunder, and by that shift, with the false plea of patience, unjuſtly driven from his kingdome, filch a way the harts of the Queenes liege people!

   • c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, Act I, scene i, page 145:

     This man hath bewitch'd the boſome of my childe: / Thou, thou Lyſander, thou haſt giuen her rimes, / And interchang'd loue-tokens with my childe: […] With cunning haſt thou filch'd my daughters heart, / Turn'd her obedience (which is due to me) / To ſtubborne harſhneſſe. […]

   • c. 1603–1604, William Shakespeare, The Tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As It Hath Beene Diurse Times Acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by His Maiesties Seruants, London: Printed by N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Eagle and Child, in Brittans Bursse, published 1622, OCLC 724111485, Act III, scene iii, page 46:

     But he that filches from me my good Name, / Robs me of that, which not enriches him, / And makes me poore indeed.

   • 1785 September 6, John Wolfe, The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, the Second Session of the Fourth Parliament in the Reign of His Present Majesty; which Met at Dublin on the 20th of January, and Ended the 7th of September, 1785, volume V, Dublin: Printed by P[atrick] Byrne, No. 108, Grafton-street, and W[illiam] Porter, No. 12, Skinner-row, OCLC 833944061, page 501:

     He [Wolfe] therefore hoped, that every county in the kingdom would, […] meet, and conſult, and expreſt their moſt ſtrenuous diſlike and abhorrence of this ſcheme of deceit, to filch from them their liberties and commerce.

   • 1916 April, Jack London, chapter XXIX, in The Little Lady of the Big House, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, OCLC 35794056, page 342:

     His very cocksureness is filched from [Charles] Darwin's morality of strength based on the survival of the fittest.

   • 2010, Steve Zimmerman, “Hunger”, in Food in the Movies, 2nd edition, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 131:

     The film [The Kleptomaniac (1905)] begins when a prosperous matron leaves her home to go on a shopping trip to a large department store where she filches several items before she is apprehended by the store detective and escorted to the police station to stand trial before a judge.

   • 2015, Cynthia J. Buckley, “Back to the Collective: Production and Consumption on a Siberian Collective Farm”, in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, editors, Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 230:

     The farm drivers were often found to be filching from the cars for spare parts or moonlighting with trucks for personal gain.

• See also Thesaurus:steal

• filched (adjective)
• filcher
• filching (noun)

filch (plural filches)

1. Something which has been filched or stolen.
   • 1876 May 6, “Kingston”, quoting the Surrey Advertiser, “[Queries:] Profane Hymn Tunes”, in [John] Doran, editor, Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, etc. (5th series), volume V, number 123, London: Published at the office, 20, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C. by John Francis, OCLC 847235371, page 368, column 1:

     'New Sabbath' is partially a filch from [George Frideric] Handel's beautiful but voluptuous song in Hercules, 'There the brisk sparkling nectar drains.'

2. An act of filching; larceny, theft.
   • 1860, Lawrence Peel, “To John B[acon] S[awrey] Morritt, Esq., Portland Place, London [letter from Sir Walter Scott]”, in A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel, London: Longman, Green, Longma, and Roberts, OCLC 727264, page 173:

     By the appropriation clause, which is here referred to, it was proposed to apply a part of the property of the Irish Church to secular purposes, that is, to work a transfer of property, with an alteration of its uses. Call this as you will, a spoliation, or wise application, it implies a loss to one and a gain to other, of the same property. In the evil sense, it means spoliation, or wrongful deprival, appropriation, or "conveyance" in the sense of a filch.

3. (obsolete) A person who filches; a filcher, a pilferer, a thief.
   • 1803, William Hogarth; Thomas Cook, engraver, “Southwark Fair”, in Anecdotes of Mr. Hogarth, and Explanatory Descriptions of the Plates of Hogarth Restored. Engraved by Thomas Cook, London: Printed for the engraver, no. 38, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden; and G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster Row, OCLC 4772793, page 2:

     A ſimple lad, with a whip in one hand, and the other locked in the arm of a young girl, is ſo loſt in gaping aſtoniſhment, that an adroit branch of the family of the Filches is clearing his pockets of their contents.

4. (obsolete) A hooked stick used to filch objects.
   • 1930, Thomas Dekker [?], “O Per Se O (1612)”, in A[rthur] V[alentine] Judges, editor, The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads Telling of the Lives and Misdoings of Vagabonds, Thieves and Cozeners, and Giving Some Account of the Operation of the Criminal Law, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, OCLC 220303243, page 380; reprinted as The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads (Key Writings on Subcultures, 1535–1727: Classics from the Underworld; I), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2002, →ISBN, page 380:

     Thus much for their fraternities, names, lodgings, and assemblies, at all which times everyone of them carries a short staff in his hand, which is called a filch, having in the nab, or head, of it, a ferme (that is to say, a hole) into which, upon any piece of service, when he goes a filching, he putteth a hook of iron, with which hook he angles at a window in the dead of night, for shirts, smocks, or any other linen or woollen. And for that reason is the staff called a filch.

• (act of filching): larceny, theft
• (person who filches): filcher, pilferer, thief