smash-and-grab
Also smash and grab, smash'n-grab.
[f. smash v.1, grab v.]
Used attrib. to designate a type of robbery in which the thief smashes a shop-window and grabs the goods there displayed. Also transf. and fig., and absol. Hence smash-and-grabber; smash and grabbing vbl. n.
| 1927 J. C. Goodwin Crook Pie ii. 52 ‘Smash and Grab’ raids seem to be the order of the day. 1928 Daily Tel. 9 Oct. 12/2 Three men in a motor-car were concerned in a smash-and-grab raid... One of them threw a stone through the window. They then seized all the cameras available and returned to the car, which was driven away before a chase could be started. 1932 [see screwer 2]. 1933 Blunden Charles Lamb vii. 206 A literature of the smash-and-grab type..seems to have some chance of superseding the thorough, persuasive, modulated and interwoven style. 1937 A. L. Rowse Sir Richard Grenville v. 106 A smash-and-grab run upon the Isthmus of Panama. 1938 [see pick-up n. a (vi)]. 1939 T. S. Eliot Old Possum's Practical Cats 23 They were..remarkably smart at a smash-and-grab. 1944 G. B. Shaw Everybody's Political What's What? xxvi. 232 Monstrous world wars and smash-and-grab revolutions. 1951 M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 145/2 A commercial society dedicated to the smash and grab and one-man fury of enterprise. 1960 Observer 24 Jan. 5/1 A sausage team always had to work three-handed... One to do the smash and grabbing. 1965 H. I. Ansoff Corporate Strategy (1968) iii. 39 In reaction to the public outrages at the ‘smash'n-grab imperialism’ of the nineteenth century, business has acquired a sense of social responsibility. 1970 Oxf. Times 23 Oct. 1/6 A smash and grab raid was carried out on the shop of Horns..shortly before midnight. 1973 W. M. Duncan Big Timer iv. 29 They tell me there was a smash-and-grab at Shader's, miss. 1978 Daily Mail 25 Jan. 12/2 Robbery with violence..used to be a ‘snatch’ or a ‘smash-and-grab’. |