desperate criminal
1
6.8
- noun
- US
:
criminal desesperado
- The gang of desperate criminals plotted a bank heist under the cover of darkness.
Examples
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In the wild west, a desperate criminal often resorted to dangerous tactics to evade capture.
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New York's finest out catching desperate criminals!
Blog text (1) -
The chase ended when the police cornered a desperate criminal trying to escape through the alleys.
Synonyms
101
4.4
A person who breaks the law and has no legal protection
8
8.8
A bold, reckless outlaw in the Old West
4
9.9
A person on horseback who robbed travelers on roads
A person who stops and robs travelers on the road in the Old West, often from stagecoaches
How Dangerous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a bold and dangerous outlaw' is straightforwardly derived from combining 'desperate' (willing to take dangerous or extreme measures) with 'criminal' (a person who commits crimes); the adjective simply modifies the noun in a compositional way. This adjective+noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English semantics, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Desperate criminal comes from stories of the Wild West and the Spanish word 'desperado', used for outlaws who had 'no hope' and nothing to lose. A desperate person would take big risks, so a criminal like that acted boldly and dangerously, and that's why desperate criminal means 'a bold and dangerous outlaw' today.