Also clepto-. [f. Gr. κλεπτο-, combining form of κλέπτης thief + MANIA.] An irresistible tendency to theft, actuating persons who are not tempted to it by necessitous circumstances, supposed by some to be a form of insanity.
1830. New Monthly Mag., XXVIII. 15. Similar instances of this cleptomania are well known to have happened in this country, even among the rich and noble.
1861. Critic, 19 Oct., 410. Persons … subject to what has been characterised as ‘Kleptomania.’
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., xxiii. When a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act kleptomania.
Hence Kleptomaniac, one affected with kleptomania (also attrib. or as adj.); Kleptomanist.
1861. R. F. Burton, City of Saints, 74. The Dakota of these regions are expert and daring kleptomaniacs.
1874. Maudsley, Respons. in Ment. Dis., iii. 82. Many kleptomaniacs have … been moral imbeciles.
1884. Graphic, Christm. No. 21/1. A kleptomaniac ape.
1862. M. B. Edwards, John & I, xliv. (1876), 321. No more … than a kleptomanist can keep his fingers off the goods on a shop-counter.
