thief

   Normally an insulting accusation, the seriousness of which depends on what is alleged to have been stolen. ‘You thief’ said by one child to another because of a stolen chocolate biscuit, for instance, would be thought of as part of childhood’s ongoing war of words.

   Examples of its use by youngsters occur in Girl with Green Eyes, by Edna O’Brien and Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. ‘Thief’ is often used alone - sometimes as ‘horse-thief’ - but in Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, an employee who is being dismissed by someone he thinks has underpaid him, says: ‘you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away for your saphead of a son’

   The traditional cry of ‘Stop, thief’ presumably asks other people to stop the thief. The thief himself is unlikely to stop in his tracks simply because he is asked to do so.

   In Shakespeare, ‘thief’ is usually a powerful insult and is fairly well used as a vocative. Thus Cloten, in Cymbeline (4:ii) tells Guiderius: ‘Thou art a robber,/A law-breaker, a villain. Yield thee, thief.’ Later he says: ‘Thou injurious thief,/Hear but my name, and tremble.’ In Twelfth Night occurs ‘Notable pirate, thou salt-water-thief.’ In Othello (l:ii) Brabantio faces Othello with: ‘O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow’d my daughter?’