filch

verb

1. (transitive)To illegally take possession of (something, especially items of low value); to pilfer, to steal.

   “Hey, someone filched my wallet!”

   “You would foiſt in non cauſam pro cauſa ["I do not bring into question"], have it thought your flight from your olde companions, obſcuritie and ſilence, was onely, with Æneas, to carry your father on your backe through the fire of ſlaunder, and by that shift, with the false plea of patience, unjuſtly driven from his kingdome, filch a way the harts of the Queenes liege people!”

   “This man hath bevvitcht the boſome of my childe, / Thou, thou Lyſander, thou haſt giuen her rimes, / And interchang'd loue tokens vvith my childe: / […] / VVith cunning haſt thou filcht my daughters heart, / Turnd her obedience (vvhich is due to mee) / To ſtubborne harſhneſſe.”

   “But he that filches from me my good name, / Robs me of that, vvhich not inriches him, / And makes me poore indeed.”

   “He [Wolfe] therefore hoped, that every county in the kingdom would, […] meet, and conſult, and expreſt their moſt ſtrenuous diſlike and abhorrence of this ſcheme of deceit, to filch from them their liberties and commerce.”

noun

1. Something which has been filched or stolen.

   “'New Sabbath' is partially a filch from [George Frideric] Handel's beautiful but voluptuous song in Hercules, 'There the brisk sparkling nectar drains.'”

2. An act of filching; larceny, theft.

   “By the appropriation clause, which is here referred to, it was proposed to apply a part of the property of the Irish Church to secular purposes, that is, to work a transfer of property, with an alteration of its uses. Call this as you will, a spoliation, or wise application, it implies a loss to one and a gain to other, of the same property. In the evil sense, it means spoliation, or wrongful deprival, appropriation, or "conveyance" in the sense of a filch.”

3. (obsolete)A person who filches; a filcher, a pilferer, a thief.

   “A ſimple lad, with a whip in one hand, and the other locked in the arm of a young girl, is ſo loſt in gaping aſtoniſhment, that an adroit branch of the family of the Filches is clearing his pockets of their contents.”

4. (obsolete)A hooked stick used to filch objects.

   “Thus much for their fraternities, names, lodgings, and assemblies, at all which times everyone of them carries a short staff in his hand, which is called a filch, having in the nab, or head, of it, a ferme (that is to say, a hole) into which, upon any piece of service, when he goes a filching, he putteth a hook of iron, with which hook he angles at a window in the dead of night, for shirts, smocks, or any other linen or woollen. And for that reason is the staff called a filch.”