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Glite Dictionary
💸 Unfairly high price 🤠 Robbing travelers
highway robbery

highway robbery

1 7.3
An act of stealing from people travelling on a public road, often by force
  • noun
  • /ˈhaɪˌweɪ ˈrɑːbəri/
  • NSFW
translation icon : robo en carretera

Examples

  • One cop car is nothing compared to the highway robbery that is perpetuated by the powers that be.

    Blog text (3)

  • The gang was arrested after they committed highway robbery on the travelers heading through the remote area.

  • Authorities are investigating the recent incidents of highway robbery where masked thieves attacked motorists.

  • She felt unsafe traveling alone after hearing about a local case of highway robbery near the old bridge.

Synonyms

robbery
vshighway robbery
749 2.3

Stealing things from people and places such as shops and banks using force or threats

is the same crime but limited to travellers near public roads

Surface Forms

highway robbery singular
highway robberies plural

Morphology

highway + robbery

The phrase is a figurative extension of the literal words 'highway' and 'robbery' — a B1 learner who knows those words can likely infer a theft/metaphor of unfairness, but the specific conventional meaning of 'charging an unreasonably high price' is an idiomatic pragmatic shift rather than a direct compositional derivation. Because the pricing sense depends on cultural/conventional usage and context to be fully understood, it is partially predictable but not fully transparent.

Etymology

Highway robbery comes from a time when armed thieves stopped people on the highway and took their money in a robbery, so the phrase originally meant 'to rob travellers'.