[f. the earlier COMPLICE. The prefixed ac- is not accounted for; it may have arisen from the indef. art. a complice, or by assimilation to accomplish; there is no analogous form in L. or Fr.] An associate in guilt, a partner in crime. Const. of; also with the criminal, in (to obs.) the crime.
1485. Caxton, Chas. the Grete (1880), 164. I shal make thadmyral to dye, and al hys complyces.
1589. Nashe, Alm. for Parrat, 5 d. Call to minde the badde practise of your brother the Booke-binder and his accomplishes at Burie.
1596. Spenser, State Irel., 20. And many the like of others his accomplices and fellow-traytors.
1692. Dryden, St. Euremont’s Ess., 319. He was a friend of Cataline’s and a secret accomplice of his Crime.
1732. Lediard, Life of Sethos, II. vii. 43. Thou who hast been accomplice with the thieves and murtherers.
1735–8. Ld. Bolingbroke, Diss. on Parties, 152. We cannot lose … our Constitution, unless We are Accomplices to the Violations of it.
1853. H. Rogers, Ecl. Faith, 158. To permit any evils which we can prevent is in like manner to be accomplices in the crime.
1860. W. Collins, Wom. in White, II. ii. 181. English society is as often the accomplice as it is the enemy of crime.
2. rare. and perh. only playfully, in a sense not bad.
1591. Shaks., 1 Hen. VI., V. iii. 9.
| Successe vnto our valiant Generall, | |
| And happinesse to his accomplices. |
c. 1860. Wraxall, trans. R. Houdin, vii. 96. In the mean while be kind anough to act as my accomplice.
