Green’s Dictionary of Slang

see under blind adv.¹

(orig. US) to have a relationship with someone much younger than oneself.

1897		Little Falls Wkly Transcript (MN) 3 Sept. 2/2: A certain young fellow [...] took a little Fargo girl over the river [...] The girl’s father [...] didn’t do a thing but smash the young fellow’s face [...] If a few more mashers who are trying to rob the cradle get horse-whipped, the social atmosphere will improve.
1907		Sequachee Valley News (TN) 25 Apr. 2/3: John Grantham says he don’t want to rob the cradle when he married. He said he wanted a girl that raised her self.
1913		Sport (Adelaide) 29 Nov. 4/1: Why doesn’t Len B. ake a big tart to the pictures. Don’t rob the cradle yet, Len.
1922		Morn. Tulsa Dly World 12 Mar. 27/2: She criticizes older girls, so-called ‘vamps’ for attempting to rob the cradle.
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 366: She looked damn young. Christ, he’d be robbing the cradle here.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 84: You must be crazy [...] You’re really robbing the cradle.
1955		Mad mag. Aug.–Sept. 26: We call it ‘robbing the cradle’. For the simple fact is, Pocahontas at the time was a tender, 12 years of age.
1961		H. Ellison ‘Lady Bug, Lady Bug’ in Gentleman Junkie 46: I am not known [...] as a lofty example to young womanhood [but] I am not that depraved that I rob cradles.
1983		Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 5: rob the cradle – to date someone several years younger than yourself.
1999		Eble Campus Sl. Nov.
2024		R. Sullivan Devil’s Best Trick 34: There were a lot of jokes about the old man robbing the cradle. Jimmie was a slightly grizzled forty-seven-year-old [...] while Brenda was a still very attractive thirty.

1. (US tramp) to steal food delivered to people’s doorsteps early in the morning.

1930

‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 212: Robbing the mail – Snatching food and milk delivered at the doorstep early in the morning.

2. (US tramp) for one tramp to steal (the choicest items) from a parcel of food given to a group.

1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 160: Robbing The Mail. – Eating the pastry or cake from a ‘lump’ or ‘hand out,’ and said of the tramp who, foraging for food to be eaten with another or by a group, deliberately robs the parcel of its choicest bits before handing it over for a division.
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 88: You little rat! Bring me back a bald-headed lump, will you? Robbin’ the mail, eh? Where’s the rest of it?

the vagina.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

(Aus.) mind your own business.

1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl.
1943		Western Mail (Perth) 1 Apr. 9/3: Text book stuff. Who's observing for this battery! Who-who's robbing this coach?
1951		(con. 1941) E. Lambert Twenty Thousand Thieves 130: Who’s robbing this coach? Do you want to hear the news or not?
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 241/2: who’s robbing the coach? – ‘you keep out of this’ or ‘who asked you to butt into this?’.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn).
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 57: Who’s robbing this coach?: A warning to someone to mind their own business.