cracksman

English

Etymology

From crack +‎ -s- +‎ -man.

Noun

cracksman (plural cracksmen)

1. (archaic, informal) A burglar or safebreaker.
   • 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 52:

     The fraudulent clerk and the flash “cracksman” interchanged experiences.

   • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 2:

     She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven, burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

   • 1916, Melville Davisson Post, “The Man Hunters”, in The Saturday Evening Post‎^[1]:

     The bank cracksmen who looted the national bank at Northampton were traced by a piece of wrapping paper picked up in an abandoned schoolhouse.