light-fingered
light-fingered adjective: having quick, light and nimble fingers. Also the simple past and past participle of light-finger.
Adjective
light-fingered (comparative lighter-fingered or more light-fingered, superlative lightest-fingered or most light-fingered)
- Having quick, light and nimble fingers.
- Having nimble fingers, especially for stealing or picking pockets (pickpocketing), given to thievery or shoplifting.
- There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; […] yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.1848 June 28, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Before the Curtain”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], →OCLC, page vii
Also used as
light-fingered is also the simple past and past participle of light-finger.
Synonyms of light-fingered
Forms of light-fingered
| comparative | lighter-fingered |
|---|---|
| comparative | more light-fingered |
| superlative | lightest-fingered |
| superlative | most light-fingered |
| alternative form | lightfingered |
Origin of light-fingered
From light (“not heavy”, adjective) + fingered (“having fingers”, adjective).
Words formed from light-fingered
Questions about light-fingered
- What does light-fingered mean?
- Light-fingered means having quick, light and nimble fingers.
- What part of speech is light-fingered?
- Light-fingered is an adjective.
Words near light-fingered in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: light-fingered (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:
Cite this entry: “light-fingered.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/light-fingered. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.