heist

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A robbery or burglary, especially from an institution such as a bank or museum.

   “The audacious hijacking in Paris of a van carrying the baggage of a Saudi prince to his private jet is obviously an embarrassment to the French capital, whose ultra-high-end boutiques have suffered a spate of heists in recent months.”

   “The furious reaction in Germany after 200,000 protective masks destined for Berlin mysteriously went missing in Thailand and were allegedly redirected to the US is a case in point. There is no solid proof Trump approved the heist. But it’s the sort of thing he would do – or so people believe.”

   “In 1990, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, two men dressed as police officers pulled off the largest art heist in history, with 13 artworks, including three Rembrandts, and a Vermeer, that have never been found.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A fiction genre in which a heist is central to the plot; a work in such a genre.

   “It is a conventional heist play in which the drama is created less through the characters' actions than through the fact of one of them having a gun.”

   “The Bank Job is also the first proper Jason Statham movie since his days banging about in Guy Ritchie's early heists.”

   “The crew resemble typical heist characters[.]”

verb

1. (transitive)To steal, rob, or hold up (something).

name

1. A surname.