burglar

You're lucky to pull one single print out of an entire house, regardless of how careful a burglar was.

That would probably throw off and disturb most people, let alone a burglar in your house.

If you have that much burglar traffic in your home, maybe you ought to just move.

The rational response is to have property insurance and stay out of a burglar's way.

Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise, might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar.

In your home, a burglar can force you to open the safe.

I also know from experience that the Muslim burglar would never actually kill himself.

Aside from starting a gun race with the burglar and fearing losing your life altogether with your possessions, I never follow this reasoning.

I wouldn't call the American police on a burglar, if I caught him.

Maybe if you were a horse burglar or something.

Edit: corrected my assertion that burglar comes from burgle.

If I would be a car burglar today, airbags would be my target.

How could you know the burglar was wearing gloves if you weren't at the scene of the crime?" No winning there.

Or just a blind beacon of "anything" thats sniffable (edited: whoops that wouldn't work so well with silenced burglar alarm systems).

If you are into this kind of stuff, keep an eye out for "The Burglar's Guide to the City" by Geoff Manaugh, coming in October.

For "burgle" they note that it's "a back-formation < burglar n., of very recent appearance, though English Law Latin had a verb burgulare of same meaning.