Steals

How to spell steals

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce steals

What does steals mean?

1. verbTakes something that belongs to another person without permission or right.
2. nounThings bought for far less than their real value; great bargains.

Steals in a sentence

• verb

  The report claims that one employee regularly steals cash from the register.

• noun

  At half the usual price, those winter coats were absolute steals.

• verb

  A clever thief steals only the items that are easy to sell.

• noun

  The clearance rack was full of steals for anyone willing to dig through it.

Where does steals come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is an inflected form of the verb 'steal', which descends directly from the Old English stelan, meaning 'to take something secretly or without right'. That word goes back to a shared Germanic root, seen also in Dutch stelen and German stehlen, and its earliest sense always carried the idea of taking by stealth rather than by force. The closely related noun 'stealth' preserves that quiet, sneaking quality, which is a useful reminder that the two words spring from the same family. Over the centuries the verb broadened to cover figurative thefts, such as stealing a glance or stealing the show, and in baseball it took on the special sense of advancing a base without the aid of a hit. The spelling holds onto the 'ea' vowel pattern of its Old English ancestor, and the only trap is the silent move from 'steal' to the homophone 'steel', the metal.

How the word is built

• steal (Old English stelan: to take wrongfully)
• -s (third person singular verb ending, or noun plural ending)