Crossword clues for housebreaker
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Housebreaker \House"break`er\, n. One who is guilty of the crime of housebreaking.
Wiktionary
n. A criminal who breaks into and enters another's house or premises with the intent of committing a crime.
WordNet
n. a burglar who unlawfully breaks into and enters another person's house [syn: cat burglar]
a wrecker of houses; "in England a housewrecker is called a housebreaker" [syn: housewrecker]
Wikipedia
A housebreaker is an organisation that specialises in the disposition of large, old residential buildings.
From the late 19th century and peaking in the mid 20th, many large country houses, manors, stately homes and castles in the United Kingdom became impractical to maintain - initially due to the repeal of the Corn Laws and the late 19th-century agricultural depression, later because of cultural changes following the First World War and then requisitioning during the Second World War. Often, they were sold to housebreakers such as Crowthers of London or Charles Brand of Dundee for disposal of their contents and demolition.
Typically, after an initial 'walk-round sale' or auction was carried out, fixtures, fittings (and occasionally whole rooms) were sold off to museums or for re-installation in other properties. The main buildings were then un-roofed or demolished (see Destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain).
From 1969, the destruction of houses of architectural or historical significance was prohibited by law and the job of the housebreakers ended. An estimated 1,800 buildings were disposed of by housebreakers before this time.
Usage examples of "housebreaker".
It was one reason he'd even been able to stick out his nine residential months here with twenty-one other newly detoxed housebreakers, hoods, whores, fired execs, Avon ladies, subway musicians, beer-bloated construction workers, vagrants, indignant car salesmen, bulimic trauma-mamas, bunko artists, mincing pillow-biters, North End hard guys, pimply kids with electric noserings, denial-ridden housewives and etc.
The Doctor doubts the assertion, giving as his reason that highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, and that it was not possible for any one to imagine that he might rob with safety, because he saw Macheath reprieved upon the stage.
But if Johnson had wished to be convinced, he might very easily have discovered that highwaymen and housebreakers did frequent the theatre, and that nothing was more probable than that a laughable representation of successful villany should induce the young and the already vicious to imitate it.
The Hardys' offer to remain overnight, in the event that the housebreakers might return, was welcomed by Mrs.
By the time of Osborn, most criminals were ordinary highwaymen, footpads, housebreakers and pirates.
When Henry Fielding’s blind brother John took over his job at Bow Street, he had to do the work all over again - hang dozens of highwaymen and housebreakers, and send hundreds of pickpockets and petty thieves to prison.
I had considered sleeping with it under my pillow, as I believe people are said to do for fear of housebreakers, but had visions of it discharging itself as I rolled over in my sleep, and anyway it had been far too big and uncomfortable to fit under my tiny goose-down pillow.
I had trouble with my footing in the dark but managed to avoid the third tread from the top, which squeaked, and the fifth from the top, whose riser – in order to trip unwary housebreakers – was four inches higher than the rest.
I myself think that the police are perfectly correct and that if, in this case, the husband did not do it, then housebreakers did.
And these days, one must assume that those housebreakers were drug addicts desperate for money or for something they can convert into money.
Here are burglars, bandits, mosstroopers, kidnapers, housebreakers, murderers, character assassins, plagiarists!