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Larceny   /lˈɑrsəni/   Listen
Larceny

noun
(pl. larcenies)
1.
The act of taking something from someone unlawfully.  Synonyms: stealing, theft, thievery, thieving.



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"Larceny" Quotes from Famous Books



... on, and rubbed his hands. Warrants were speedily issued by the baronets of Bullockshed and Tenterhook, for the apprehension of the individuals who had been seen carrying off the notice-boards, for larceny, and against a number of others for trespass. There was plenty of work for Daredeville and his brethren of the robe; but it all ended, after the flying about of sundry mandamuses and assize trials, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... sheltered secret corner, we made a very hasty breakfast of these stolen dainties, and since we had not the heart to restore them to our innkeeper, so we had not the face to chide Moll for her larceny, but made light of the business and ate with great ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... "I guess in a good many cases it wouldn't do to be too curious," she said cynically. "If you believe the stories you read and the movies you see everybody who has committed a crime anywhere from petty larceny to murder skips out ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... the Hatter's Municipal Police Commission looked into the question they found that the Cop who spent most of his time asleep spent less of his time clubbing people who wouldn't whack up with him on the profits of their business. Every ossifer who has been convicted of petty larceny in the past, the records show, has been a fellow who stayed awake most of the time, and no ossifer has ever yet been known to go in for graft or get a record for clubbing innocent highwaymen over the head while he was asleep either on a Park Bench, or in ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... son, and little boy of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the chances ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... nothing whatever to do with her stealing a necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself a lady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing a desperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. But she could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting her dusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began to suspect that Alston Choate, too, was caught in the lure of Esther's inexplicable ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... should steal your heart away, my own, my darling, my child." Then Kate, instead of answering, got up and threw herself at her mother's knees, and buried her face in her mother's lap, and Mrs. O'Hara knew that that act of larceny had already been perpetrated. ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... three others were ordered committed to the Clay County jail at Liberty on a charge of treason; Parley P. Pratt and four others to the Ray County jail on a charge of murder; and twenty-three others were ordered to give bail on a charge of arson, burglary, robbery, and larceny, and all but eight of these were locked up in default of bail. The prisoners confined at Liberty secured a writ of habeas corpus soon after, but only Rigdon was ordered released, and he thought it best for his safety to go back to the jail. He afterward, with the connivance of the sheriff and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... and chain—unambitious to add a charge of larceny to his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and horses might have ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... kick at anything until they tried to take away her cloak. Not much! She was just beginnin' to be stuck on that. She kept it wrapped around her like she knew the proprietor wa'n't responsible for overcoats. The Boss tried to tell her how there wa'n't any grand larceny intended, but it was no go. She had her suspicions of the crowd, so they just had to let her sit there draped in black. And at that ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... gild a treason that did not endanger his life with a peculation that could not further damage his reputation. Rebellion, even in a bad cause, may have its romantic side; treason, which had not been such but for being on the losing side, may challenge admiration; but nothing can sweeten larceny or disinfect perjury. A rebellion inaugurated with theft, and which has effected its entry into national fortresses, not over broken walls, but by breaches of trust, should take Jonathan Wild for ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... for the appropriation of another man's goods, it is an axiom that the court (when once the questions of fact have been disposed of) shall adjudicate only on the issue as to whether the particular appropriation of goods in dispute comes under the denomination of larceny, burglary, or other co-ordinate category; and that upon this the sentence shall go forth: directing that the legal consequences which are appointed to that particular class of action ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... fingers, of his only rival, the municipal magistrate. For eighteen months he has seen the lower Court crowded with affairs, the while his own stood unfrequented like an obsolete churchyard. He may have remarked with envy many hundred cases passing through his rival's hands, cases of assault, cases of larceny, ranging in the last four months from 2s. up to L1 12s.; or he may have viewed with displeasure that despatch of business which was characteristic of the magistrate, Mr. Cooper. An end, at least, has been made of these abuses. Mr. Cooper is henceforth to draw his salary for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... look around the town while I'm on the bench—unless you care to step into court and see how we administer justice—hah! hah! it's only a few 'drunk and disorderlies' or a case of assault that we get nowadays; or perhaps a petty larceny—anyway, you will ride into the town with me, and we will have a bit of lunch together at the Crown and Scepter. No, I won't take any refusal! To tell you the truth, I want to have a chat with you about that last ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... my answer to your question. Here I can secure myself a good living—as a matter of fact, I can easily get the wherewithal to purchase any luxuries that I desire—and it is gotten without a petty-larceny struggle with my fellow men. Here I exploit only natural resources, take only what the earth has prodigally provided. Why should I live in the smoke and sordid clutter of a town when I love the clean outdoors? The best citizen is the man with a sound mind and a strong, healthy ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... advent had spread like wildfire. Old men and maidens, young men and boys, the matron and the maid, alike came running. Altogether, Lynn Hammer was set throbbing with an excitement such as it had not experienced since the baker's assistant was wrongly arrested for petty larceny in 1904. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... be arrested for attempted larceny I cared not; the idea that Karamaneh was concealed somewhere in the building ruled absolutely, and a theory respecting this silver image had taken possession of my mind. Exactly what I expected to happen at that ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... to complain heavily of you, Cottle. Here am I committing grand larceny on my time, in writing to you; and you, who might sit at your fire, and write me huge letters, have not found time to fill even half a sheet. As you may suppose, I have enough of employment. I work like a negro at law, and therefore neglect nothing else, for he who never wastes time has ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... from a joss stick burning before the Chinaman's joss, and was reminded of a certain Prometheus, who in olden times was said to have filched fire from the heathen deities, but for a nobler purpose, and having been convicted of this flaming larceny, had for his punishment "the Vulture and the Rock," which fate I deprecated for my friend; although should he remain long in this climate, I could not answer for the state of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... is right," said Brother Eusebius, and in considering poppa's theory in its relation to the doubtful character before them nobody noticed, except me, the petty larceny, by Richard Dod, of one Early Christian toe-bone. His expression, I am glad to say, made me think he had never stolen anything before; but you couldn't imagine a more promising beginning for a career of embezzlement. As we moved on I mentioned to ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... together, and as we walked he told me the number of prisoners, the sort of crimes for which they were detained—ranging from man-slaughter to petty larceny—and finally, details of his own career. He was an intelligent man, and when we came to the prison door insisted on drinking ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... of it futile; it urges the proved utility of a law as a reason for its not being enacted; as well suggest that because the criminal courts are mainly occupied with the trial of thieves there ought to be no law against petty larceny, or that because the labours of the Divorce Court increase year by year, the law ought not to permit divorce. The absurdity of the official reply suggests the existence of some reason which the defenders of this strange omission are unwilling clearly to allege. The true reason why the founders ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... Huntington, who arrived in 1801. At the time of the organization of the court, the court-house had not been built, and the first session was held in Murray's store, which had just been built. The first business was the finding of a bill by the grand jury for petit larceny, and several for the offence of selling whisky to Indians, and selling foreign ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... borrowed the ideas of others. "His (Peel's) life," he said, "has been a great appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others' intellect.... From the days of the Conqueror to the termination of the last reign there is no statesman who has committed political petty larceny ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... and comforting the enemy. It was determined between there that both would quit the brig the moment an opportunity offered; and the mate even went so far as to propose an attempt to escape in one of the boats, although he might incur the hazards of a double accusation, those of mutiny and larceny, for making the experiment. Unfortunately, neither Rose, nor her aunt, nor Biddy, nor Jack Tier had seen the barrel of powder, and neither could testify as to the true character of Spike's connection with ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... James P. Casey, was well-known and of evil repute in the City. Bold, daring, and unscrupulous, his hand was ever ready to execute the plans of villainy which his fertile brain had conceived. Sentenced in New York to imprisonment for grand larceny in the State Prison at Sing Sing for the term of two years, and discharged when that term had nearly expired; he soon after sailed for California. Shortly after his arrival, he was chosen Inspector of Elections in the Sixth Ward of San Francisco. Here he presided over the ballot box, and was ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... expression in it than a piece of coal. He was never known to lean to the side of mercy during the whole of his career as an officer, and as commissioner he had exclusive jurisdiction over the petty court of Ballarat, and fined and sentenced miners, who were brought before him for drunkenness and petty larceny, without mercy. He was an ambitious man, and had striven for a long time to get a seat upon one of the benches of the upper courts in Melbourne, but owing to the want of influence, he had never ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... help you to do anything you wish," answered Green, "provided it doesn't amount to treason or petty larceny." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... only seen the last volume. It is unnecessary for me to observe that such premature notice, written in such complete ignorance of the work, can do no good. I think that he should be reprimanded, and his petty larceny arrested. I shall ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... with a soul to appreciate the extra-judicial utterances of Mr. Samuel Warren can have forgotten the memorable lament over the decline and fall of the fine old English maid-servant with which, some years ago, he introduced some cases of petty larceny to the notice of the grand-jurors of Hull. The alarm sounded with such touching eloquence from the judgment-seat was taken up last autumn, if we remember, by a venerable Countess, who, in an address to an assemblage of Cumbrian lasses, aspirants to the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... my pocket wherewith to pay it.... Miserable pupil of a stern master! luckless son of a savage father! to whom could I turn for help? Not certainly to Dr. Cheron, whom I had been ready to accuse, half an hour ago, of having stolen my watch and purse. Petty larceny and Dr. Cheron! how ludicrously incongruous! And yet, where was my property? Was the Hotel des Messageries a den of thieves? And again, how was it that this same Dr. Cheron looked, and spoke, and acted, as if he had never seen me in his life till this morning? ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... behaviour as a matter of course, and he would no more have thought of praising other people or himself for having a strict sense of honour in their conduct of a newspaper than he would of praising them or himself for not committing petty larceny, perjury, or fraud. He took, indeed, a very hopeful view of mankind and did not the least believe they were really bad, even if they did show themselves to be tigers on occasion. For instance, I remember his saying to me once, with that naive gaiety ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... helped to break open hotel doors, discovered a villain tied and gagged by other villains, stood on my head in Morris Siegelman's joint, started a riot in East Broadway, helped a detective to commit a larceny, cheeked a British lord, and scoffed at a Hungarian prince, to say nothing of the present racket. So don't you go making plans for the night yet a while, McCulloch, because John D. will keep you busy without any call for you exercising your ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... of January, 1761, "Joseph Bennett, John Jenkins, Owen McCarty, and John Wright were publickly whipt at the Cart's Tail thro' the City of New York for petty Larceny,"—so the newspaper account states,—"pursuant to Sentence inflicted on them by the Court of Quarter Sessions held last Week for the Trial of Robbers," etc. In March the same year "One Andrew Cayto received 49 Stripes at the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... theft of five thousand dollars is grand larceny. The theft of five millions, stained with human blood, is ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... paused to moralize—which he didn't—upon the discovery, he would have laid it all at the door of his lucky star; and would have been wrong. We who have never stooped to petty larceny know that the oars had been placed there at the direction of his evil genius bent upon facilitating his descent into the avernus of crime. Let us, then, pity the poor young ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... between a Sunday-school text and petty larceny?" retorted Jack Benson, sternly. "What do you mean by taking the submarine ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham

... or feathers. White-necked storks often begin nest-building about the middle of May, but eggs are rarely laid earlier than the second week of June. House-crows nest at the same time of year, and they often worry the storks considerably by their impudent attempts to commit larceny ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... Grand larceny is when the value of property stolen exceeds $25.00—When less than that, the offence is ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that we're pals and pledged to see ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... Baltimore policemen have made their appearance in Richmond. Some of these, if not indeed all of them, have been employed by Gen. Winder. These men, by their own confessions, have been heretofore in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, merely petty larceny detectives, dwelling in bar-rooms, ten-pin alleys, and such places. How can they detect political offenders, when they are too ignorant to comprehend what constitutes a political offense? They are illiterate men, of low instincts and desperate characters. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... sheriff, at the instigation of the Comstocks, raided White's premises at 10 Courtlandt Street and seized the books, accounts, and correspondence carried away by White and Moore on January 1. Simultaneously, the Comstocks succeeded in having White and Moore arrested on a charge of larceny "for stealing on last New Year's Day a large number of notes and receipts," and in September White was arrested on a charge of forgery. Since the alleged offense took place in Pennsylvania, he was extradited ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... one or two bad soldiers do wrong. The punishment must reach the perpetrators, and no one can identify them as well as the party who is interested. The State of Tennessee does not hold itself responsible for acts of larceny committed by her citizens, nor does the United Staten or any other nation. These are individual acts of wrong, and punishment can only be inflicted on the wrong-doer. I know the difficulty of identifying particular soldiers, but ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... industry? There is no democrat who does not consider it one of the finest attributes of power, no utopian theorist who does not place it in the front rank as a means of organizing happiness. Now, government is by nature so incapable of directing labor that every reward bestowed by it is a veritable larceny from the common treasury. M. Reybaud shall furnish us the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... meaning to commit a trespass* only, or larceny, or other unlawful deed, and doing an act from which involuntary homicide hath ensued, have heretofore been adjudged guilty of manslaughter, or of murder, by transferring such their unlawful intention to an act much more penal ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... can see Cliff was meant to be Minister of Treasury. He's got wholesale larceny in his soul, none of this picayunish stuff such as robbing ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... gonorrhoea; has contracted syphilis and received a serious burn during an attack of delirium tremens. In all, he spent eight of the past fourteen years in penitentiaries, jails, and institutions for the criminal insane, and has, now, an indictment for larceny hanging over him. Released from a six years' confinement he finds himself thrown upon his own resources and is confronted for the first time with the problem of providing for himself. The poorly-begotten ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... knew what to think!" he murmured; and then he resumed a brisker air and continued, "I am ready to suspect Simon Rattar of any crime in the calendar—leaving out petty larceny and probably bigamy. But he's the last man to do either good or evil unless he saw a dividend at the end, and where does he score by taking any part or parcel in conniving at or abetting or concealing evidence or anything else, ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... Maga, both professing to be fac-similes, were at one time supported in America, in addition to countless republications of particular articles; such, for instance, as the tales of "Ten Thousand a-Year," and "Caleb Stukeley"! I think I hear you exclaim at such wholesale grand-larceny; but though not inclined to take up the cudgels for Reprint and Co., it is but justice to tell you what they would say in self-defence. The truth is, they would not have known what you meant, had you told them, when their republication ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... 'when she next chooses an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who, by the way, is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw (except Lord E[lgin]), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome stipend of 150 piastres (L8 sterling), out of which he has to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... putting out her hand at the instigation of the three prowlers, who remained on the watch and drew alms by force at nighttime from belated bourgeois encountered in dark corners; next came vulgar vice and its wonted attendant, blackmail; and then theft, petty larceny to begin with, the pilfering of things displayed for sale by shopkeepers, and afterwards more serious affairs, premeditated expeditions, mapped out like real ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... records of the precinct in which she has lived for years show that she is a woman of very bad character, and that she has been under arrest nine times for drunkenness, larceny, creating disturbance, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... dropped to take up the more serious—just as when a man is believed to be guilty of murder, no mention is made of his crime of larceny. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... lonely lodgings and arrested me. What for? you ask in blank amazement. Has an honest and industrious American citizen no rights? Must it ever be that the poor and downtrodden are sacrificed to glut the maw of that ten-fold tyrant at Police Headquarters? They charged me with larceny, with working the confidence game, and despite my protestations and the eloquence of my learned counsel, who cost me my last nickel, a hard-hearted and idiotic jury convicted me, and that sandy-haired old flint at the General Sessions gave ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... out the lesser sentences of the justices, inflicting the punishment ordered and collecting the fines imposed. For instance, when a certain poor woman, Elizabeth Armistead, was convicted of petty larceny at the West Riding Sessions, in 1598, it was ordered by the justices that "she shall nowe be delivered to the constable of Keerbie, and he to cause her to be stripped naked from the middle upward and soundly whipped thorowe the said ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... coast, with all the tribes and varieties of tribes of the interior of Africa. This may account for their having less pride and stiffness than the Tuaricks of Ghat, who are purer Berbers; as well as for their disposition to thieving and petty larceny, of which I have recently been obliged to give some examples. The pure Berbers, likewise, are much less sensual than their bastard descendants, who seem, indeed, to have no idea of pleasure but ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... in her ethics arose out of her failure to discriminate between relative importances, for she undoubtedly regarded the sale of a glass of beer after the closing hour as being quite as reprehensible as grand larceny or the bearing of false witness. To her every judge must be a learned, wise and honorable man because he stood for the enforcement of the law of the land, and she never questioned whether or not that law was wise or otherwise, which ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. The history of copyright law seems to show that the treatment of property in brain product has been based on this erroneous idea. To steal the paper on which an author has put his brain work into visible, tangible form is in all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal the brain work is not a crime. The utmost extent to which our enlightened American legislators, at almost the end of the nineteenth century, have gone in protecting products of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... back in anything but good will. I hate to see him get the worst of it from every direction. He grins and doesn't say anything. But I know it hurts. There can't be anything much wrong between you two. Why don't you forget your petty larceny troubles ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... year 1827 'grand larceny', that is to say, stealing to a value exceeding twelve pence, was punishable with death. The Act 7 George IV, cap. 28, abolished the distinction of grand and petty larceny. In 1837, the first year of Queen Victoria's reign, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... chanced, had detected the theft, burst out laughing, not only at the astonishment of the gentlemen present, who were at a loss to account for the sound, but also at the originality of the stunning event. At length Monsieur le Baron, by his own blushes half-convicted of larceny, fell on his knees before the king, humbly saying:—"Sire, the pricks of gaming are so powerful that they have driven me to commit a dishonest action, for which I beg your mercy." And as he was going on in this strain, the king cut short ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... was a season of feasting, merry-making of all kinds, and general licence. During the whole month the great seal was kept shut up in a box, face downwards, and the law was, as it were, laid asleep. All courts of justice were closed; debtors could not be seized; small crimes, such as petty larceny, fighting, and assault, escaped with impunity; only treason and murder were taken account of and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again. At the close of the saturnalia the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... almost accusative and convictive of guilt, in spite of entire innocence on the part of the person stared at. It was inconceivable that any mortal would have dared lay violent hands upon that jewel-case under that stare. It would have seemed to partake of the nature of grand larceny ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... difficulty with which a proprietor in this region has to contend. Completely besotted and brutish in their ignorance, they are incapable of obtaining an honest living, and have supported themselves, from a time which may be called immemorial, by practising petty larceny on an organized plan. The Pine Rat steals wood, steals game, steals cranberries, steals anything, in fact, that his hand can be laid upon; and woe to the property of the man who dares attempt to restrain him! A few weeks may, perhaps, elapse, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... blackmail. piracy, privateering, buccaneering; license to plunder, letters of marque, letters of mark and reprisal. filibustering, filibusterism[obs3]; burglary; housebreaking; badger game*. robbery, highway robbery, hold-up* [U.S.], mugging. peculation, embezzlement; fraud &c. 545; larceny, petty larceny, grand larceny, shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia[obs3], den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits theft] thief &c. 792. V. steal, thieve, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... theft, the petty larceny of snuff-boxes and pocket-handkerchiefs, the theft which seeks a modest alms in a neighbour's pocket, is tolerated as paternally as mendicity. Official statistics give the number of the beggars in Rome, I believe, somewhat under the mark; ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... should strive to defend them by the small wiles of a village attorney,—that, when the honor of a nation and the principle of self-government are at stake, he should show himself unconscious of a higher judicature or a nobler style of pleading than those which would serve for a case of petty larceny,—and that he should be abetted by more than half the national representatives, while he brings down a case of public conscience to the moral level of those who are content with the maculate safety which they owe to a flaw in an indictment, or with the dingy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of? Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... against Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks that friends of the latter to this day refer to the selection of Hayes and Wheeler by a joint Electoral Commission to whom the contested election was referred, as a fraud and larceny on the part of the Republican party. It is not the part of an historian, who is absolutely destitute of political principles, to pass judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... manliness amongst men, some modesty amongst women. There the offending wife fears beheading and 'saucy water;' here she leaves with impunity her husband, who rarely abandons the better half. Consequently the sex has become vicious as in Egypt—worse than the men, bad as these are. Petty larceny is carried on to such an extent that no improvement is possible: as regards property, the peninsula contains the most communistic of communities. The robbers are expert to a degree; they work naked ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... seen on the streets. Here and there you could see the familiar faces of those who had served as jurors for years and yet had never lost a case. Wealthy delinquents began to subpoena large detachments of witnesses at the expense of the county, and the poor petty larceny people in the jail began to wonder why their witnesses didn't show up. Slowly the wheels of Justice began to revolve. Ever and anon could be heard the strident notes which came from the room where the counsel for the defense ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... to one's own use what is intrusted to him by another. To buy or receive property knowing it to have been embezzled, is to be guilty of the same offense. Embezzling is usually punishable in the same manner as larceny of the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... even her brazen face fell. Six months previously that creature had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... had entered the garden, dug out some of the provisions, and was about to make off with her booty. In spite of desperate resistance, she was taken to the police station and there duly charged with larceny. Meanwhile her son, on hearing of his mother's incarceration, hastened to find her in her cell, and, after briefly consulting with her, he decided on entering a countercharge of assault and battery against both her captors. Whether ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... contention was overruled by the presiding judge, who was sustained in that view by the Supreme Court on exception. There was, however, no such offence as embezzlement known to the common law. So a person who fraudulently converted to his own use the property of another could only be convicted of larceny; and the offence of larceny could not be committed where the offender had been entrusted with the possession of the property converted, the essence of larceny being the felonious taking of the property from the possession of the owner. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... well used to such scenes; looking upon all kinds of robbery, from petty larceny up to housebreaking or ventures on the highway, as matters in the regular course of business; and regarding the perpetrators in the light of so many customers coming to be served at the wholesale and retail shop of criminal ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... think now how strangely things happen! They copped him for "larceny by finding,"—that's all! But SAILL couldn't read, and the jury was kindly, So EDDARD got off, though his chance appeared small. Now would this young Waterman keep out of sorrow, No derelict casks let him—shall we say, borrow? Madeira is nice, but you'd best have a care, Before swigging ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... form; bringing the various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, as well as in the distinctions of larceny and fraud. It also mitigated the rigour of the penal law, while it recognised ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar criminal. Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms of imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner. Even among some thieves ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... emotional mental atmosphere is entered at an earlier age than is commonly imagined; and when such a girl's own personal interests are in any way affected by the occurrences under examination, we are never secure from gross exaggeration and misstatement. Petty larceny becomes robbery with violence; a trifling incivility, a serious assault; a harmless pleasantry, an interesting proposal for elopement; and the foolish prattle of children ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... of young men were brought in charged with burglary, but after the evidence was heard the complaints were amended to petit larceny, and the defendants were given their liberty upon promising to go to work and obey the law. When I left the Maxwell Street Court on January 11, 1908, to try civil cases, the suspended sentences in all cases were set aside and the defendants discharged, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... Lassalle are made for just such years. His friends all played their parts, each in his own way, in the struggle for German liberty and union. Lassalle alone was absent from the field. He was defending himself against a charge of criminal conspiracy to commit larceny, an incident in the case of the Countess von Hatzfeld. He disposed of this charge in season to join the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and in the spring of 1849 he completed his apprenticeship as a revolutionist with a term in jail. At the expiration of his sentence he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... off one of the genuine articles and had treasured it, no doubt, against the coming of some unsophisticated patron such as I. And I doubt whether that could have happened anywhere except in Paris either. That is just it, you see. Try as hard as you please to see the real Paris, the Paris of petty larceny and small, mean graft intrudes on you and takes ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... authority, delights to show himself off by vain and superfluous inquiry. And hence it was that more than half an hour elapsed before the foreman was seen returning into the court with a trumpery indictment for larceny. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... Sessions, I could not refrain from more than once pointing to it in strong language in my charges to the Grand Juries. In July last year, for instance, I was led, in connection with a particular case of larceny, to observe . . . . 'The case itself will, I trust, involve no difficulty so far as the Grand Jury is concerned; but it affords the magistrates another opportunity of lamenting that there should so speedily be furnished no less than five additional instances ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... half-dressed, faded young girls lounged within the bar-rooms or at the doors, with here and there a couple of the same style of gemman to be met with about the silver hells of London; having, however, a bolder and more swash-buckler-like air than that of their mere petty-larceny European brotherhood. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... Lieutenant, "that you are under arrest for piracy on the high seas. Also for deliberate murder. Also for the larceny of the Manhattan ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... made before so doing, was scandalous. However, when this was followed up with the idea that Rossetti should, after exhuming the poems, have copies made and place these back in the coffin, and that the performance of midnight digging was nothing less than petit larceny from a dead woman, witnessed by the Blessed Damozel leaning over the bar of Heaven—in all this we get an offense in literature and good taste which in Kentucky or Arizona would surely have cost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... so!" broke in the explosive Wheatcroft. "The Major has been with us for thirty years now. I'd suspect myself of petty larceny as soon ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... stealing; of whom two were transported to Newcastle for fourteen years, one was flogged and put in the pillory, one transported to Newcastle for two years, and one acquitted. Lastly, Nineteen for petty larceny; of whom one was sent to Newcastle for four years, one for three years, fourteen were sentenced to various terms of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... the narrator, protesting so strongly that he would not commit such an act, that Tantaine perceived at once that some such trifling act of larceny weighed ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... the grand jury to inquire whether that act had been infringed by parties liable to their inquisition.[A] No indictment, however, was returned for the offence; neither were any proceedings had upon the indictments for treason. The business of the court was restricted to such crimes as larceny, and assault and battery, among the heterogeneous mass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various



Words linked to "Larceny" :   misappropriation, shrinkage, larcenist, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, biopiracy, larcener, petty, defalcation, grand larceny, felony, shoplifting, petit larceny, misapplication, thieving, grand theft, rustling, robbery, skimming, embezzlement, peculation, pilferage



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