t4terrific Wrote:Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were thieves. They did victimize others.
My point was that the term Outlaw would apply to them, and has been routinely applied to criminals of the old west. They were professional criminals, living outside the law.
Ok, I don't mean to be anal, (but I am sometimes) so I looked this up, and we're right.
outlaw adj.
Word History: The word outlaw brings to mind the cattle rustlers and gunslingers of the Wild West, but it comes to us from a much earlier time, when guns were not yet invented but cattle stealing was. Outlaw can be traced back to the Old Norse word tlagr, “outlawed, banished,” made up of t, “out,” and lög, “law.” An tlagi (derived from tlagr) was someone outside the protection of the law. The Scandinavians, who invaded and settled in England during the 8th through the 11th century, gave us the Old English word tlaga, which designated someone who because of criminal acts had to give up his property to the crown and could be killed without recrimination. The legal status of the outlaw became less severe over the course of the Middle Ages. However, the looser use of the word to designate criminals in general, which arose in Middle English, lives on in tales of the Wild West.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Outlaw