Etymograph

English

steal

Steal comes from Middle English stelen, from Old English stelan, from Proto-West Germanic *stelan, from Proto-Germanic *stelaną.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*stelaną1‘to steal’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*stelan1‘to steal’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150stelan1‘to steal’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500stelen1‘to steal’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1596steal1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1596, Edmund Spenser: “They could insinuate and steal themselves under the same…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*stelanąWiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny‘to steal’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*stelanWiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny‘to steal’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150stelanWiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny‘to steal’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500stelenWiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny‘to steal’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1596stealWiktionary, English steal, which cites Pokorny. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1596, Edmund Spenser: “They could insinuate and steal themselves under the same…”

The story

For the meaning development compare with Russian красть (krastʹ, “to steal”) and Russian кра́сться (krástʹsja, “to stalk, to prowl, to slink”). Proposed etymologies beyond Germanic are numerous and include

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Word family

English words that share an ancestor with steal, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.

through Proto-Germanic *stelaną ‘to steal’

1 more relative in the full family tree

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Today it means

verb To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “steal”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Germanic *stelaną / steal