- 1
To filch is to steal something small or not worth much — a , a pen, a few coins from a dish — not a car and not a bank. The word is a little old and a little playful. You will meet it in stories more than in the street. It usually suggests sneaking, not force: someone filches a cookie when nobody is looking. It is informal, but not rude. For a serious crime, English uses steal, rob, or burgle instead. People sometimes stretch it to a look (“filch a glance”), still with that sneaky, small-theft feel.
順手牽羊；偷（小東西）
組成From Middle English filchen, “to steal little things.” Where that older word came from is not sure. It may be related to folk (a group of people), but that is only a likely guess, not a settled fact.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
filchverb/fɪlt͡ʃ/
- 1
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!
filchnoun/fɪlt͡ʃ/
- 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
obsoleteA 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
obsoleteA 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.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。