heist
noun

- a crime in which valuable items are taken illegally and often violently from a place or person

- a heist is a robbery, especially one in which money, jewellery, or art is stolen

Cambridge Dictionary / Collins Dictionary

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ORIGIN

"Heist" is American English underworld slang from the 1930s and now in common usage.

It is probably a dialectal alteration of hoist, meaning to lift. Lift is also slang for stealing (as in shoplift). In older British slang, hoist referred to lifting someone on one’s back or shoulders to help him break into a building.

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THE MOST FAMOUS HEIST

Time magazine once published a list of the top 25 crimes of the 20th century. In addition to major events like the Lindbergh kidnapping and the O.J. Simpson trial, the list contains several spectacular heists such as The Great Train Robbery.

The 15 thieves who held up the Royal Mail train between Glasgow and London on August 8th 1963 stole 120 bags packed with the equivalent of $7 million and were treated like folk heroes by the press and public. Although the operation took only 15 minutes, the robbery was not as smooth as people remember it. It wasn’t non-violent (the driver of the train was hit on the head and never fully recovered from the trauma) and it was not carefully executed (the thieves left fingerprints everywhere).

The case has lived on in popular memory because of the further adventures of one of its minor players, Ronnie Biggs, whose escape from prison and long years of evading justice was constantly played out in the British boulevard press. Readers were fascinated that a small-time criminal could end up being part of the biggest heist in British history and be the only one to get away with it all.

Biggs eventually gave himself up in 2001, returning voluntarily from Brazil to serve the 28 years remaining in his sentence. He died on 18 December 2013, aged 84, at the Carlton Court Care Home in Barnet, north London, where he was being cared for.

Biggs’ death coincidentally occurred hours before the first broadcast of a two-part BBC television series The Great Train Robbery. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 3 January 2014. The coffin was covered with the Union Jack Flag, the flag of Brazil and a Charlton Athletic scarf. An honour guard of British Hells Angels escorted his hearse to the crematorium.

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SYNONYMS

armed robbery, caper, five-finger discount, breaking and entering, HEIST, hold-up, robbery, smash-and-grab, stick-up, sting

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“One of the best HEIST movies of all time was ‘the Sting’ with Paul Newman and Robert Redford.”

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Paul Smith