yegg

• yeg

Origin unknown.

yegg (plural yeggs)

1. (cant, slang) A person who breaks open safes; a burglar.
   • 1904, Edwin S. Porter (director), Capture of the ‘Yegg’ Bank Burglars
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, “Accessary after the Fact”, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384, page 51:

     She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

   • 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin 2010, p. 265:

     ‘These racketeers are a new type. We think about them the way we think about old time yeggs or needled-up punks.’

• safecracker, yeggman

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