daylight robbery

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

an act of theft or exploitation that is blatant and unfair

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

hành động trộm cắp hoặc khai thác trắng trợn và không công bằng

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: robbery taking place in daylight
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

' Daylight robbery these days, ' said the customer ahead of her.
At the County Ground, it was daylight robbery; a smash and grab raid by Charlton.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “daylight robbery” mean?

an act of theft or exploitation that is blatant and unfair Literally: robbery taking place in daylight

Is “daylight robbery” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.