Thug Etymology

Now that Mayor Bloomberg has placed "thug" in play, it's time to talk about origins of the word. The Dodger remembers Thug from a Sherlock Holmes novel. Many Holmes stories feature intrusion of the colonies into London society. The colonials are evil doers. The Dodger can't remember which one had a Thuggee from India as a participant. In Study in Scarlet, the back story and the bad guys are Mormons from Utah.

Wikipedia enlightens us:

Thuggee (or tuggee) (from the Sanskrit root sthag (Pali, thak), to conceal, mainly applied to fraudulent concealment) was an Indian cult, operating from the 13th to the 19th centuries, worshipping Kali whose members were known as Thugs. It was allegedly a hereditary cult with both Muslim and Hindu members that practiced large-scale robbery and murder of travellers by strangulation. Induction was typically passed from father to son, with the women of the household being kept ignorant of the cult activity.

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"Allegedly" hides lack of sourcing.