Definition
Any group of lawbreakers or other disreputable characters.
Origins
From rogue + gallery. Popularized by American detectives Allan Pinkerton and Thomas F. Byrnes.
In Context
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."