Definition
To take property belonging to another without right or permission and with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of it. As a verb, "steal" describes the act underlying the crime of larceny and related theft offenses. In legal usage the term carries a specific technical charge: to steal is to commit larceny, meaning the felonious taking and carrying away of the personal property of another with intent to convert it to one's own use.
In common parlance, "stealing" is used more broadly than its strict legal definition. It may describe the unlawful appropriation of things that are not technically subjects of larceny under common law — including real property (immovables), services, intellectual property, or trade secrets — none of which historically supported a larceny charge. Modern criminal codes have largely dissolved this gap by consolidating theft offenses under unified statutes, but the distinction remains important when reading historical indictments, pleadings, or case law that turns on whether the property stolen was capable of being the subject of larceny.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it; also extended to appropriating credit, drawing attention surreptitiously, or acquiring something at an unexpectedly low price.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 records "steal" primarily as a noun meaning a handle or stale — an archaic and regional English usage entirely disconnected from the legal or modern common sense of the word.
The Webster's 1913 noun entry is a false cognate and a researcher's trap. The verb "to steal" was already the dominant meaning in 1913 popular usage; Webster's simply chose to document the rarer noun. The legal dictionaries of the same period treat the verb exclusively. The meaningful gap is not between common and legal usage in the modern sense — both mean roughly the same thing — but between the breadth of popular usage (which extends to immovables, services, and intangibles) and the narrower technical scope of larceny at common law, which required tangible, movable personal property.
Common Confusion
STEAL vs. LARCENY vs. THEFT: These three terms are frequently used interchangeably but carry distinct legal weights depending on the jurisdiction and era. At common law, "larceny" was the formal crime; "steal" was the operative verb used in indictments ("take, steal, and carry away"); and "theft" was a broader popular synonym. Under modern consolidated theft statutes, all three often describe the same conduct. In historical sources, however, treating them as synonyms can produce errors: a charge that a defendant "stole" something did not always satisfy the technical elements of larceny if the thing taken was not movable personal property.
STEAL vs. EMBEZZLEMENT vs. FALSE PRETENSES: Popular usage conflates stealing with embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretenses. Historically these were separate offenses with distinct elements. Embezzlement required that the defendant lawfully received the property before converting it; false pretenses required a fraudulent misrepresentation inducing a voluntary transfer. Neither was "stealing" in the technical larceny sense. Anderson's Dictionary flags this boundary: using knowledge or patterns acquired in confidence may be described colloquially as stealing but does not impute the felonious taking required for larceny.
Why It Matters in Research
The indictment formula "take, steal, and carry away" appears in common law pleadings from the sixteenth century forward and remained standard in American jurisdictions well into the twentieth century. When reviewing historical indictments, the presence of "steal" signals a larceny charge — and therefore requires attention to whether the property at issue was capable of being stolen under the contemporary common law definition. Courts were strict: larceny did not lie for land, fixtures, or things attached to the realty; electricity and gas occupied contested ground well into the late nineteenth century; and trade secrets or written information were similarly problematic.
Modern researchers must resist reading current consolidated theft statutes back into historical materials. Many states replaced common law larceny, embezzlement, false pretenses, and receiving stolen property with single statutory theft offenses during the mid-to-late twentieth century. A case from 1880 turning on whether defendant "stole" a pattern or a document may resolve very differently than the same fact pattern under a 1980 theft statute.
The word "steal" in civil contexts also appears in defamation cases. Anderson's Dictionary notes that accusing someone of having "stolen" patterns may not be actionable as imputing a felony if the speaker's evident meaning was fraudulent use of confidential knowledge rather than felonious taking — a distinction courts drew carefully when the line between civil wrong and criminal accusation had significant consequences for slander per se analysis.
Corpus researchers should also note that the verb appears in constitutional and statutory contexts beyond criminal law: stealing trade secrets, stealing elections, and stealing intellectual property are terms of art in specialized bodies of law that carry their own technical definitions independent of larceny doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Anderson's Dictionary of Law are in close agreement on the core point: "steal" in legal usage denotes the commission of larceny, and its appearance in an indictment is a term of art rather than a loose synonym for any wrongful taking. All three sources acknowledge that popular usage is broader — extending to immovables and other things incapable of being the subject of larceny at common law.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the twentieth-century consolidation of theft offenses. Because Black's earliest editions predate most consolidated theft statutes, they reflect a world in which the distinctions among larceny, embezzlement, and false pretenses were live doctrinal questions. Modern editions of Black's have updated the treatment substantially, but researchers working with the historical editions should be aware that the entry for STEAL was written in that earlier doctrinal environment.
Anderson's addition — that "he stole my patterns" may not be actionable as imputing a felony — is a useful reminder that courts read legal vocabulary in context, not in isolation. The same word carries different weight depending on whether it appears in an indictment, a civil complaint, or a casual accusation.
Jurisdictional Note
Most American states have replaced common law larceny with consolidated theft statutes that treat stealing, embezzlement, false pretenses, and related offenses as a single crime. England undertook similar consolidation under the Theft Act 1968. Researchers working with pre-consolidation materials must identify the jurisdiction's specific statutory or common law framework; the elements of "stealing" varied enough that outcomes on identical facts could differ across state lines.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Larceny; Theft Offenses (Consolidated Statutes); Embezzlement