Language tip of the week: steal

In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc.

This week’s language tip helps with other ways of saying steal:

rob to steal something from a person or place while using or threatening to use force or violence:
They robbed the local bank and drove off in a white car.
mug to attack a person in a public place and steal from them:
A woman of 85 was mugged in the street.
burgle to steal from a building that you have entered illegally:
We got back from holiday to find we’d been burgled.
shoplift to steal goods from a shop:
Security guards caught an elderly man shoplifting in the department store this afternoon.
break into to enter someone’s property illegally:
The thieves had managed to break into the car and take the stereo.
nick or pinch British (informal) to take something that belongs to someone else, usually used in a friendly way:
Someone’s nicked my pen!

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