Apedia

Appeared English Colorful Yegg York Yeg Noun Safecracker

Yegg refers to a safecracker or a robber.

Yegg é um arrombador de cofres ou um ladrão.

Front yegg \YEG\
Back noun
Safecracker; also: robber.

["Safecracker" first appeared in print in English around 1825, but English speakers evidently felt that they needed a more colorful word for this rather colorful profession. No one is quite sure where "yegg" came from. It first appeared in the New York Evening Post on June 23, 1903, in an article about "the prompt breaking up of the organized gangs of professional beggars and yeggs." By 1905, it had acquired the variant "yeggmen," which was printed in the New York Times in reference to unsavory characters captured in the Bowery District. "Yegg" has always been, and continues to be, less common than "safecracker," but it still turns up once in a while.]

"The book will end with [Victor Ribe], too, but only after he repeatedly disappears for chapters at a stretch, upstaged by a sadistically overpopulated ensemble of sundry grifters, grafters and hard-boiled yeggs." - David Kipen; Channeling Hammett, Sort of; San Francisco Chronicle; Apr 14, 2002.

"With their millions in underwriting fees they were the true winners of the great bull market's endgame - they and the dazzling assortment of con artists, bucket shop crooks, mafia figures, and two-bit yeggs who emerged from the woodwork in the late nineties, hearing in the populist call a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fleece the suckers." - Thomas Frank; One Market Under God; Doubleday; Oct 17, 2000.

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