pickpocket
/ˈpɪkpɒkɪt/
pickpocket noun: one who steals from the pocket of a passerby, usually by sleight of hand.
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Noun
pickpocket (plural pickpockets)
- One who steals from the pocket of a passerby, usually by sleight of hand.
- Old men, young men, and boys, stalwart burglars and highway robbers, slept side by side with wizened pickpockets or cunning-featured area-sneaks.1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 52
- For several days, Mr. Sammler returning on the customary bus late afternoons from the Forty-second Street Library had been watching a pickpocket at work […] Mr. Sammler if he had not been a tall straphanger would not with his one good eye have seen these things happening.1970, Saul Bellow, chapter 1, in Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, published 1971, page 8
Verb
pickpocket (third-person singular simple present pickpockets, present participle pickpocketing, simple past and past participle pickpocketed)
- To pick pockets; to steal.
- Vodafone has also dropped its claim against one of Rhys Edwards’s travelling companions – who had been at the same reunion and had his phone pickpocketed two hours later in almost identical circumstances to Rhys Edwards.2014 November 22, Miles Brignall, “Victory against Vodafone for schoolteacher billed £15,000”, in The Guardian
pickpocket meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Telugu
pickpocket in Hindi
- one who steals from the pocket of a passerby
- गाँठकट gā̃ṭhkaṭ
pickpocket in Tamil
- செப்புமாரி, ஜேப்படி
pickpocket in Urdu
- جیب کترا
pickpocket in Telugu
- one who steals from the pocket of a passerby
- జేబుదొంగ jēbudoṅga, కత్తెరదొంగ katteradoṅga
More languagesFewer languages
- pickpocket in Malayalam
- പോക്കറ്റടിക്കാരൻ, കള്ളൻ, മോഷ്ടാവ്, അപഹർത്താവ്
- pickpocket in Kannada
- ಜೇಬುಗಳ್ಳ, ಕಿಸೆಗಳ್ಳ
- pickpocket in Tagalog
- mandurukot, mandukot
- pickpocket in Arabic
- نَشَّال naššāl
- pickpocket in Malay
- penyeluk saku
- pickpocket in Indonesian
- pencopet, copet
- pickpocket in Thai
- นักแซ้ง nák-sáeng, มือกาว meu-gaao, นักล้วงกระเป๋า nák-lúuang-grà-bpǎo
- pickpocket in Vietnamese
- kẻ móc túi, móc túi
Examples of pickpocket in a sentence
- You can't say that robbing a bank is like pickpocketing. The two are just not comparable.
- The pickpocket got my watch off me.
- Be on your guard against pickpockets in the railway station.
Synonyms of pickpocket
1 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of pickpocket
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | pickpockets |
| alternative form | pick-pocket |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | pickpockets |
| present participle | pickpocketing |
| past participle | pickpocketed |
| past | pickpocketed |
Origin of pickpocket
From pick + pocket.
Words formed from pickpocket
Questions about pickpocket
- What does pickpocket mean?
- Pickpocket means one who steals from the pocket of a passerby, usually by sleight of hand.
- What is pickpocket in Hindi?
- Pickpocket in Hindi is गाँठकट (gā̃ṭhkaṭ). See Pickpocket meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is pickpocket?
- Pickpocket can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce pickpocket?
- Pickpocket is pronounced /ˈpɪkpɒkɪt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of pickpocket?
- The plural of pickpocket is pickpockets.
Words near pickpocket in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pickpocket (page history and authors); pickpocket (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pickpocket (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pickpocket (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); pickpocket (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-pickpocket.wav.
Cite this entry: “pickpocket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pickpocket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.