A thief in law ( vor v zakonye; zlodiy u zakoni; zlodzey u zakone; kanonieri kurdi; orenk'ov go?; ) in the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states and respective diasporas abroad is a specifically granted informal status of a professional criminal who enjoys elite position within the organized crime environment and employs informal authority over its lower-status members. Each new Vor is vetted (literally "crowned", with respective rituals and tattoos) by consensus of several Vors.
权威例句
1.
Born in Soviet Georgia in 1937, he received his first prison sentence in 1957 for resisting arrest and, during his third in the 1960s, became a "thief inlaw", a Russian term comparable to a Mafia "godfather".
BBC: Russia's 'top gangster' Grandpa Khasan shot dead
词源
1
thief in law:
thief +? in +? law, calque of Russian вор в зако?не ?(vor v zakóne)