noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
petty
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Most burglaries are the work of petty thieves on the look our for an easy opportunity.
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Habitual petty thieves and drug addicts dumped on top of their already bulging caseload become their newest clients.
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Twenty-three years old. Petty thief .
■ NOUN
car
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This standard feature makes it very difficult for a car thief to steal a Clio and falsify its identity.
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Alicia Silverstone is a poor little rich girl and Benicio Del Toro is a car thief drawn into a kidnapping plot.
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In an attempt to beat the car thief more sophisticated alarms are being brought on to the market.
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He was Paul Lazzaro, the polka-dotted car thief from Cicero, Illinois.
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He was a professional car thief .
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Craig Cook, a reformed car thief , explains how easy it is to break into a car.
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The car thieves jumped out and escaped on foot as the stolen vehicle ran into the house.
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Craig says he believes this would make a would-be car thief think twice before trying to steal a protected car.
jewel
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Ah, a glamorous jewel thief .
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The Wall Street Journal once described him as looking like an international jewel thief .
■ VERB
become
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Unfortunately, most would probably become the fiefs of thieves and warlords.
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If they had no money, then likely they would have become thieves .
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As the possession of documentation for stolen cattle became important, thieves began to turn stolen animals in as strays.
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This was rejected on the grounds that such sinister tunnels would become lurking places for thieves .
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But to become a thief , a real thief that was a step away from herself.
break
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Cottage raided: Cash totalling to £1,500 was stolen when thieves broke into a holiday cottage in Gayle, near Hawes.
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The canisters containing the pellets were stolen on Thursday night by thieves who broke into a storeroom at a Berkshire nature park.
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One night a thief broke into the church to steal jewels from the Madonna on the High Altar.
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A £70 pair of sunglasses was taken from one car and thieves tried to break into another.
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The thieves broke into Birdland in Bourton on the Water at night.
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The thief broke into the house between 2.30 and 9.30 p.m. on Saturday.
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And thieves broke into their Cumberland Street home and stole all their wedding presents.
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Yesterday Mike Dodd, of the authority's finance department, said the thieves broke in through a store room window.
call
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They call me Chernayev the thief .
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She rang her boss, who told her to call the thief .
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She told them about her house and that the managers were calling her a thief .
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Was the chaplain angry at being called a thief ?
catch
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Nobody can leave the planet - not before we've caught the dangerous thief .
steal
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He was satisfied that this stolen gun and this thief Tucker had nothing to do with the people who had injured him.
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Instead of stealing away like a thief in the night!
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Cottage raided: Cash totalling to £1,500 was stolen when thieves broke into a holiday cottage in Gayle, near Hawes.
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Work, rest and steal SWEET-TOOTHED thieves made off with 230,000 Mars Bars in a cheeky raid on the world-famous chocolate factory.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
be (as) thick as thieves
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All among the trees, the birds are thick as thieves and noisy as conventioneers.
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Then they'd be as thick as thieves again.
nest of spies/thieves/intrigue etc
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Neville Chamberlain wrote that the Cabinet was a nest of intrigue, which was, considering everything, an understatement.
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Perhaps we're in the middle of a nest of spies whom Meredith-Lee was about to unmask.
petty criminal/thief etc
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Amongst them were pickpockets, alcoholics, pimps, drug peddlers and other petty criminals.
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Before they met me, Steve and Paul were just petty criminals, didn't know nothing about nothing.
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Habitual petty thieves and drug addicts dumped on top of their already bulging caseload become their newest clients.
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Most burglaries are the work of petty thieves on the look our for an easy opportunity.
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Over the years several have been the victim of petty criminals.
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The Home Secretary was not about to be seen as going soft on the petty criminal.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Thieves took a marble statue from the church sometime last night.
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a car thief
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She accused me of being a thief and a liar.
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The thieves had been careful not to leave any fingerprints.
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Warning! Car thieves are operating in this area.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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All I could think was how brave the thief was, or how desperate.
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But the Colonel was more than a thief of funds.
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Colin Fountain says they've taken measures to stop thieves getting in.
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Elle Folk are great thieves of dough and other food, and are strange-looking indeed.
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In most cases the thieves targeted cars which had been left with bags or other valuables clearly visible.
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These were the zeks - they might be killers or thieves or rapists or parasites or hooligans.
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Unfortunately, most would probably become the fiefs of thieves and warlords.
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Well, all archaeologists were thieves, of a sort.