rogues' gallery

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word rogues' gallery. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word rogues' gallery, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say rogues' gallery in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word rogues' gallery you have here. The definition of the word rogues' gallery will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofrogues' gallery, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: rogue's gallery and rogues gallery

English

Etymology

rogue +‎ gallery. Popularized by American detectives Allan Pinkerton and Thomas F. Byrnes.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (AU)(file)

Noun

rogues' gallery (plural rogues' galleries)

  1. A set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals used in law enforcement investigations to help witnesses identify suspects.
    • 1866, "Readings for the Young: The Rogues' Gallery," in The Christian Treasury, Johnstone, Hunter & Co. (Edinburgh), pp. 322-323:
      When the policemen arrest a man . . . if there is good reason to suspect him, they take his picture before they let him go. . . . Then they put the picture up in the rogues' gallery among the others, where everybody who comes there can see it.
    • 1984, William Diehl, Hooligans, →ISBN, page 41:
      "Recognize these people?" Dutch asked, pointing to the rogues' gallery.
      I nodded. "All of 'em. Cutthroats to the man."
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) Any group of lawbreakers or other disreputable characters.
    • 1951 December, Michael Robbins, “John Francis's "History of the English Railway"”, in Railway Magazine, page 800:
      By 1859, D. Morier Evans was exhibiting [George] Hudson as the principal character in his rogues' gallery entitled "Facts, Failures and Frauds"; and at the hands of modern economic historians he has been written down as a common swindler.
    • 1997, Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey, →ISBN, page 325:
      The old staple of every demonstration: gully gully may shor hai, Congress Party chor hai—the cry goes up in every alley, Congress Party is a 'rogues' gallery—was very much in evidence.
    • 2006 February 6, “The Man Who Sold the Bomb”, in Time:
      For more than a decade, Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, masterminded a vast, clandestine and hugely profitable enterprise whose mission boiled down to this: selling to a rogues' gallery of nations the technology and equipment to make nuclear weapons.
  3. (fiction) The set of supervillains associated with a particular superhero or comic book title.

Alternative forms

See also

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia