Word: underworlders
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...point the underworld contacted Tiernan and Daly and offered its help. Criminals were getting as tired of the investigation as the police were. Attorney General Francis E. Kelly even offered the extra reward of immunity to anyone who would talk...
California. Los Angeles cops were on the track of the vengeful author of 1,500 postcards mailed to U.S. travel agencies and chambers of commerce, who pictured Los Angeles as "a city of thieves and criminals, ruled by the underworld...
California. Pasadena cops writing an examination for sergeant's ratings found themselves unable to define such low-down underworld terms as gopher (safeblower), third rail (incorruptible official), derrick (shoplifter) and kite (a letter sneaked past the warden). Crooks don't talk that way in Pasadena, they complained. The chief of police agreed, ordered all "detective fiction crime terms" stricken from the exam. Said one cop who got a higher score than his mates: "I'd read a short story in the Saturday Evening Post the night before, so I knew most of the answers...
...Ocean Drive (Columbia] is a gangster melodrama unconvincingly disguised as a documentary crusade against an $8-billion-a-year gambling racket. It was filmed, say its pressagents, under threats of violence from the underworld and with the protection of police. It begins with an endorsement by Wisconsin's Republican Senator Alexander Wiley, hailing it for informing the public "of the meaning of that innocent $2 bet at the candy stand." One point in the picture's favor: it is full of interesting electronic gadgets (e.g., walkie-talkies, relay amplifiers) illustrating the illegal transmission of betting information from...
Roughing It. Criminals originally coined cant (itself a 16th Century underworld verb meaning "to speak") to conceal their plans from eavesdroppers. When cant words pass into popular slang, as they do in the U.S. far more rapidly than Lexicographer Partridge seems to be aware, new mintings are made. Yet "the main body of cant is [more] conservative" than most people realize...