Word.ws English Dictionary

second-story men

second-story men is the plural of second-story man.

Meaning of second-story man

Noun

second-story man (plural second-story men)

  1. (US, slang) A burglar, especially one who performs a legitimate service at a residence and returns later to perform the theft, usually by way of an unconventional access point above ground level that was identified in the initial visit.
    • For a brief period in Warsaw in the 1890s, Kornblum had been forced into a life of crime, as a second-story man, and the prospect of prizing the Golem out of its current home, unsuspected, awoke wicked old memories of gaslight and stolen gems.2000 September 19, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 16
    Synonyms:
    cat burglar

Questions about second-story men

What is second-story men the plural of?
Second-story men is the plural of second-story man.

Words near second-story men in the dictionary

  1. second-storey man
  2. second-storey men
  3. second-storey worker
  4. second-storey workers
  5. second-story man
  6. second-story men
  7. second-string
  8. second-stringer
  9. second-stringers
  10. second-system effect
  11. second-system effects

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second-story men (page history and authors); second-story man (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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