toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

pilfer
in a sentence

show 71 more with this conextual meaning
  • Chix Verbil's pantomime antics provided the perfect cover for a spot of pilfering.†   (source)
  • Before long he headed back to the rowan, carrying sausages he had pilfered from the cellar.†   (source)
  • Walsh still had no sense that his ideas were likely to be pilfered, or that they were even recognized as ideas.†   (source)
  • This time he was wearing a thick white robe a friend of his had pilfered from a Los Angeles hotel.†   (source)
  • Sethe understood it then, but now with a paying job and an employer who was kind enough to hire an ex-convict, she despised herself for the pride that made pilfering better than standing in line at the window of the general store with all the other Negroes.†   (source)
  • …the BTDUS are stored, for example, in a lobby area or within the facility in which they are i66 actually utilized, they will be subject to pilferage and "shrink. age" as unauthorized persons consume them, either as partof a conscious effort to pilfer or out of an honest misunderstanding, i. e., a belief that the BTDUs are being provided free of charge by the operating agency (in this case the United States Government), or as the result of necessity, as in the case of a beverage spill…†   (source)
  • Filled the hog trough and walked through the pickers' cabins to see that they hadn't relieved themselves in pilfered canning jars.†   (source)
  • He had also prosecuted several fellows for pilferage.†   (source)
  • And that other fellow at the place where you hand in your food to be kept for you, safe from friskers and pilferers--Tsezar will be there before the morning roll call, with everything in a sack--he must have his cut too, and a good one, if you don't want him little by little swiping more than you gave him.†   (source)
  • So before the bell rang, everyone would walk up to Dolores's desk and hand her a tampon they'd been given by Courtney Ignatio, who'd pilfered a box from her mother.†   (source)
  • Other less noble members of the band would have decided that the two women soon would die and would have pilfered everything except for the warm fur and skin clothing they wore.†   (source)
  • Back in the truck, more kisses and a cigarette of my own (pilfered from his pack, pilfered from his mom).†   (source)
  • I was trying to think of a way to inconspicuously pilfer the picture he drew of me, which was little more than a balloon-shaped head and some brown waves of hair coming off it.†   (source)
  • Cunfar seized upon this and sometimes pilfered food and blamed me for it.†   (source)
  • He set to work scouring away four days of road grit with a pot of water Changazi's servant Yakub heated over an Epigas cylinder that had probably been pilfered, he realized, from an expedition.†   (source)
  • It's like you're pilfering everyone else's pain, taking, but not offering anything in return.†   (source)
  • "So I guess we're talking a lot deeper than pilfering a book from Stacey's bookstore?"†   (source)
  • The few photographs, mementos, books, and certificates Matron brought with her had over the years been pilfered or mislaid.†   (source)
  • All cash and coins had been pilfered.†   (source)
  • But I begged her, and Charles charmed her and finally bribed her into silence with the gift of a ruby pendant that we later learned he had pilfered from his mother's box.†   (source)
  • Is pilferage a problem?†   (source)
  • However, I am not here to present my views on the hereafter or pilfer from your fine brandy stores, or even to test your always pleasant hospitality.†   (source)
  • The wolves must have known of the location of the foxes' home, and probably knew perfectly well that there was a certain amount of pilfering from their cache; but they did nothing about it even though it would have been a simple matter for them to dig out and destroy the litter of fox pups.†   (source)
  • Her father, a dedicated and honest restaurateur, had been executed against a hospital wall for pilfering chickens from the cadre's Cholon slaughterhouse.†   (source)
  • My parents never offered them, and the glass door obviously guarded them, and so I pilfered from that case.†   (source)
  • Several miles of forest had once been cleared along the railway line on both sides of the junction, and there, among the old tree stumps overgrown with wild strawberries, the piles of timber depleted by pilfering, and the tumble-down mud huts of the seasonal laborers who had cut the trees, the deserters set up their camp.†   (source)
  • Or perhaps Mundungus, who had pilfered plenty from this house both before and after Sirius died?†   (source)
  • Close behind is Grade E, with a sizeable buy and a pilfered rock.†   (source)
  • He showed Lila and me the speculum he had pilfered from a relative who was a gynecologist.†   (source)
  • I began to suspect Brendan had pilfered a bit.†   (source)
  • …of the controlling office (i. e., the office that has collectively purchased the BTDU)-that is, if the BTDUS are stored, for example, in a lobby area or within the facility in which they are i66 actually utilized, they will be subject to pilferage and "shrink. age" as unauthorized persons consume them, either as partof a conscious effort to pilfer or out of an honest misunderstanding, i. e., a belief that the BTDUs are being provided free of charge by the operating agency (in this…†   (source)
  • Star Power was a game her parents had made up when Spencer and Melissa were little kids that she'd always suspected they'd pilfered from some company power-retreat.†   (source)
  • It would be useful to have a bar of soap: he keeps forgetting to pick one up during his pilfering excursions.†   (source)
  • FIFTEEN At first no one stopped them, and it was something his mother enjoyed so much, the trill of her laughter when they ducked around the corner from whatever store and she uncovered and presented the pilfered item to him, that George Harvey joined in her laughter and, spying an opportunity, would hug her while she was occupied with her newest prize.†   (source)
  • I drank a lot tonight, ingested an incomprehensible amount of painkillers, some borrowed from Daddy, the rest pilfered from old Sam, who seems to be suffering a lot from his arthritis.†   (source)
  • At other times, he kept Batman in a paperback copy of The Stand that had been doctored as a hiding place—starting on chapter six, a square had been cut out of the pages of the thick book with a pilfered razor blade, creating a little hollow that Calloway lined with tissues to make a bed.†   (source)
  • Mortenson was thinking how badly the boy needed a pair of the legs stacked like firewood in the pickup, and how unlikely it was that he'd ever receive them, because they'd probably been pilfered from a charity by some local Changazi, when he noticed the truck backing toward the boy.†   (source)
  • The roof beams Changazi pilfered were never recovered, and Mortenson returned to Skardu, where he and Parvi supervised the purchase and construction of wood beams strong enough to support the snows that mummified Korphe throughout deepest winter.†   (source)
  • Then, when he knows he's covered the nutrition angle, he can head for the bubble-dome, pilfer the arsenal.†   (source)
  • Schoolteacher took away the guns from the Sweet Home men and, deprived of game to round out their diet of bread, beans, hominy, vegetables and a little extra at slaughter time, they began to pilfer in earnest, and it became not only their right but their obligation.†   (source)
  • He wandered by the sea from the border north as far as San Luis Obispo, and he learned to pilfer the tide pools for abalones and eels and mussels and perch, to dig the sandbars for clams, and to trap a rabbit in the dunes with a noose of fishline.†   (source)
  • Yes, to prevent any chance of petty pilfering.†   (source)
  • Between meals, if his mother did not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering at the wretched store of food on the shelf.†   (source)
  • Aziz had tried to run away from the police, Mohammed Latif had not checked the pilfering.†   (source)
  • —Pilfering was housebreaking to Mr. Woodhouse's fears.†   (source)
  • Furiously he pilfered pockets, and found a dozen beautiful cigarettes in a wrinkled and flattened paper case.†   (source)
  • But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.†   (source)
  • The hue and cry was raised in a moment, by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden, although she had not seen the pilfering done.†   (source)
  • She had schemed; she had pilfered.†   (source)
  • No, such a man could not be nearly as happy as he over the bit of success he had pilfered and secured in one lucky stroke.†   (source)
  • He had never, he raged, however stumbling he might have been, expected to find himself a little pilferer of love, a peeping, creeping area-sneak, and not even successful in his sneaking, less successful than the soda-clerks who swanked nightly with the virgins under the maples.†   (source)
  • Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last.†   (source)
  • In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.†   (source)
  • Now, show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man's pocket in the street: unless, indeed, it be, that the legislature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs, and leaves men's brains, except when they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves.'†   (source)
  • The Dodger had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction.†   (source)
  • My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.†   (source)
  • Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold.†   (source)
  • Having enjoyed the fruit ourselves, we filled the hamper Knips always carried, and secured the fruit from his pilfering paws with leaves fixed firmly down.†   (source)
  • I am really ashamed of this pilfering.†   (source)
  • For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; rapin[24] is the masculine of rapine.†   (source)
  • It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers—a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that…†   (source)
  • In other days Pork's pilferings would have been a serious matter, probably calling for a whipping.†   (source)
  • A rather fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a dooryard.†   (source)
  • My grandmother, emboldened by the presence of our white protector said, "You may be sure we didn't pilfer 'em from your houses."†   (source)
  • She would get along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry home—or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer just as well.†   (source)
  • Would he lift the pole and pilfer the king's chariot with his weapons, or take the life of still more Thracian men?†   (source)
  • If these were Grants, then, perhaps they were seeking either booty or revenge for the cattle Rupert and friends had pilfered a few days before.†   (source)
  • Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering.†   (source)
  • But now, thank kind Heaven, being ashore; our old pilot procured us a lodging and a warehouse for our goods; it was a little hut with a large warehouse joining to it, all built with canes, and pallisadoed round with large ones, to keep out pilfering thieves, which are very numerous in that country.†   (source)
  • "Don't be surprised at that," returned the musician; "for with the callow poets of our day the way is for every one to write as he pleases and pilfer where he chooses, whether it be germane to the matter or not, and now-a-days there is no piece of silliness they can sing or write that is not set down to poetic licence."†   (source)
  • Let me beseech your grace not to do so: His fault is much, and the good king his master Will check him for't: your purpos'd low correction Is such as basest and contemned'st wretches For pilferings and most common trespasses, Are punish'd with: the king must take it ill That he, so slightly valu'd in his messenger, Should have him thus restrain'd.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)