five-finger discount
1
9.9
- noun
- /faɪv ˈfɪŋɡər dɪsˈkaʊnt/
- NSFW
:
robo
- I got myself a five-finger discount.
Examples
-
Team Gorga - everyone does a five-finger discount sometime in life, whether you're 5 stealing a pack of gum at ShopRite or 18 stealing lip gloss at Kohl's.
Blog text (10) -
Looking for a five-finger discount?
Fiction book (1999) -
- Yeah, the five-finger discount works for like 10 items - yeah, the five-finger discount works for like 10 items or less.
-
- Yeah, the five-finger discount works for like 10 items - yeah, the five-finger discount works for like 10 items or less.
-
He joked that the store was giving a five-finger discount on candy.
-
She asked her friend if he had ever tried a five-finger discount while shopping.
-
Many people refer to shoplifting as a five-finger discount in a humorous way.
Synonyms
43
2.5
Stealing things from a shop while pretending to be a customer
1
7.5
Stealing small items from a store or workplace, often done repeatedly
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
five-finger + discount
The parts ('five-finger' implying use of the hand/fingers and 'discount' meaning a price reduction) give a hint of taking goods, but the idiomatic euphemism 'five-finger discount' = shoplifting is a cultural/metaphorical extension that is not directly predictable from the constituents. A B1 learner who knows the words might guess something about hands and prices but would likely not reliably infer the precise meaning without prior exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Five-finger discount comes from the picture of someone using their five fingers to slip an item from a shop and joking that the unpaid price is a discount. That image is why the phrase is a light, humorous way to mean 'stealing', especially shoplifting.