What is the exact definition of 泥棒?

Question

In English:

• a burglar is usually associated with someone who breaks into a house (victim is usually unaware during the burglary)

• a robber is usually associated with that person who uses weapons and threatens you to give him your property (victim-aware of course)

• a mugger is usually associated with a robber on the street (victim-aware)

• a thief is usually one who sneakily steals things without resorting to violence (victim-unaware)

• a pickpocket is usually associated with a thief on the street (victim-unaware)

So what exactly is the exact nuance of a 泥棒? perhaps most likely there isn't a 1-to-1 match so probably could someone write an explanation of 泥棒 without using words like robber/mugger/thief/pickpocket/burglar etc

Side question: if we change 泥棒 to the hiragana form どろぼう, does it affect the nuance in any way?

Answer 1

In this particular case, I can see quite straghtforward correspondence between English and Japanese. But 泥棒 is also the cover term that can be used to widely refer to all of these.

• 空き巣 'burglar'
• 強盗 'robber'
• 泥棒 'mugger'
• 盗人 'thief'
• スリ 'pickpocket'
• ハンバーグラー 'Hamburglar'

Writing it in hiragana does not change the nuance.

There is a stereotypical image for 泥棒: http://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%B3%A5%E6%A3%92&tbm=isch&biw=1272&bih=1055