spate of burglaries
- noun
:
oleada de robos
- Following a recent spate of burglaries, the local police increased patrols in the neighborhood.
Examples
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Many homeowners installed security cameras after experiencing a spate of burglaries in their area.
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After a spate of burglaries in 1892, the cottagers lobbied for efficient police protection and prevailed on the town to build a jail (Bar Harbor Record 13 July 1893).
Academic text (1993) -
The town has seen a worrying spate of burglaries this month, leaving residents feeling unsafe.
Synonyms
12
3.4
A sudden rise in crime in an area in a short time
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a sudden series or large number of burglaries' is directly and compositionally derived from 'spate' (a quick succession) + 'burglary' (illegal entry/theft) with the regular linking preposition 'of', so there is no idiomatic shift. This noun + of + noun pattern is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Spate of burglaries comes from the word spate, which once meant a sudden flood of water. Picture a river breaking its banks and carrying many things at once; that strong image came to mean a 'sudden large number' of events, so spate of burglaries means a quick series of thefts.