Theft

How to spell theft

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce theft

What does theft mean?

1. nounThe dishonest act of stealing another person's property.

Theft in a sentence

• The shop installed cameras to deter theft near the tills.

• Police charged him with the theft of a laptop from the office.

Where does theft come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Theft comes from Old English þ\u0113ofth (also written þ\u00fdfth), an abstract noun meaning 'the act of stealing', formed from þ\u0113of, the ancestor of the modern word 'thief'. The root belongs to a shared Germanic family, with relatives in Old Frisian and Old Norse, all built on the idea of one who takes secretly. Over the medieval period the original ending was worn down and reshaped, and by Middle English the word had settled into the tight, single-syllable form 'theft' we use today. The spelling preserves the old link to 'thief', even though the vowel shifted from the 'ie' of thief to the short 'e' of theft, which is the small trap for writers who expect the two words to look more alike. It has carried its core legal and everyday meaning, the dishonest taking of another person's property, in an unbroken line from Anglo-Saxon times.

How the word is built

• theft (from Old English þ\u0113ofth/thieffth: act of stealing, built on þ\u0113of 'thief'
• abstract noun suffix)