cradle robber
cradle robber noun: a person who marries or becomes romantically involved with someone who is much younger, or who employs or otherwise engages a young person for a purpose inappropriate for his or her age.
Noun
cradle robber (plural cradle robbers)
- A person who marries or becomes romantically involved with someone who is much younger, or who employs or otherwise engages a young person for a purpose inappropriate for his or her age.
- "And no mother," he shouted, "can call ME a ‘fortune-hunter’ and a ‘cradle-robber’ and think I'll make good by marrying her daughter!"1914, Richard Harding Davis, The Man Who Could Not Lose
- I was a 50-year-old woman; he was a 25-year-old man. . . . I was out of my pajamas and into a short skirt before you could say “cradle robber”.2006 October 29, Francine Maroukian, “Modern Love: We Lived in the Present, Then the Future Arrived”, in New York Times
- Synonyms:
- cradle snatcher
Synonyms of cradle robber
Forms of cradle robber
| plural | cradle robbers |
|---|---|
| alternative form | cradle-robber |
Questions about cradle robber
- What does cradle robber mean?
- Cradle robber means a person who marries or becomes romantically involved with someone who is much younger, or who employs or otherwise engages a young person for a purpose inappropriate for his or her age.
- What part of speech is cradle robber?
- Cradle robber is a noun.
- What is the plural of cradle robber?
- The plural of cradle robber is cradle robbers.
Words near cradle robber in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cradle robber (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cradle robber.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cradle robber.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cradle_robber. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.