set a thief to catch a thief in English

Forms: sets a thief to catch a thief [present, singular, third-person], setting a thief to catch a thief [participle, present], set a thief to catch a thief [participle, past], set a thief to catch a thief [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|set<,,set> a thief to catch a thief}} set a thief to catch a thief (third-person singular simple present sets a thief to catch a thief, present participle setting a thief to catch a thief, simple past and past participle set a thief to catch a thief)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for post-processed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for post-processed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sets a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "setting a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "set a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "set a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "set<,,set> a thief to catch a thief"
      },
      "expansion": "set a thief to catch a thief (third-person singular simple present sets a thief to catch a thief, present participle setting a thief to catch a thief, simple past and past participle set a thief to catch a thief)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1866, Norman Macleod, editor, Good Words, page 415",
          "text": "The morality of setting a thief to catch a thief passes muster in the English force; but they do these things better in America. Pinkerton's system for the detective police in America is vastly superior to the British system.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To employ an unscrupulous person in order to catch another unscrupulous person."
      ],
      "id": "en-set_a_thief_to_catch_a_thief-en-verb-0hBkjIU2",
      "links": [
        [
          "unscrupulous",
          "unscrupulous"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "fight fire with fire"
        },
        {
          "word": "honor among thieves"
        },
        {
          "word": "it takes one to know one"
        },
        {
          "word": "poacher turned gamekeeper"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "set a thief to catch a thief"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sets a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "setting a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "set a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "set a thief to catch a thief",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "set<,,set> a thief to catch a thief"
      },
      "expansion": "set a thief to catch a thief (third-person singular simple present sets a thief to catch a thief, present participle setting a thief to catch a thief, simple past and past participle set a thief to catch a thief)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "fight fire with fire"
    },
    {
      "word": "honor among thieves"
    },
    {
      "word": "it takes one to know one"
    },
    {
      "word": "poacher turned gamekeeper"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1866, Norman Macleod, editor, Good Words, page 415",
          "text": "The morality of setting a thief to catch a thief passes muster in the English force; but they do these things better in America. Pinkerton's system for the detective police in America is vastly superior to the British system.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To employ an unscrupulous person in order to catch another unscrupulous person."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "unscrupulous",
          "unscrupulous"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "set a thief to catch a thief"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"set a thief to catch a thief" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms