What is the exact definition of 泥棒? In English: * a burglar is usually associated with someone who breaks into a house (victim is usually unaware during the burglary) * a robber is usually associated with that person who uses weapons and threatens you to give him your property (victim-aware of course) * a mugger is usually associated with a robber on the street (victim-aware) * a thief is usually one who sneakily steals things without resorting to violence (victim-unaware) * a pickpocket is usually associated with a thief on the street (victim-unaware) So what exactly is the exact nuance of a ? perhaps most likely there isn't a 1-to-1 match so probably could someone write an explanation of without using words like robber/mugger/thief/pickpocket/burglar etc Side question: if we change to the hiragana form , does it affect the nuance in any way?

In this particular case, I can see quite straghtforward correspondence between English and Japanese. But `` is also the cover term that can be used to widely refer to all of these.

> * 'burglar'
> * 'robber'
> * 'mugger'
> * 'thief'
> * 'pickpocket'
> * 'Hamburglar'
>


Writing it in hiragana does not change the nuance.

There is a stereotypical image for :