Word.ws English Dictionary

lighter-fingered

lighter-fingered is the comparative form of light-fingered.

Meaning of light-fingered

Adjective

light-fingered (comparative lighter-fingered or more light-fingered, superlative lightest-fingered or most light-fingered)

  1. Having quick, light and nimble fingers.
  2. (figuratively) 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

Questions about lighter-fingered

What is lighter-fingered the comparative form of?
Lighter-fingered is the comparative form of light-fingered.

Words near lighter-fingered in the dictionary

  1. lighter
  2. lighter fluid
  3. lighter fluids
  4. lighter screw
  5. lighter screws
  6. lighter-fingered
  7. lighter-footed
  8. lighter-handed
  9. lighter-hearted
  10. lighter-skinned
  11. lighter-than-air

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lighter-fingered (page history and authors); 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.

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