16

I saw someone insisting "loot can be robbed" and he said there are lots of instances as below.

She'll work in the New York Public Library, despite the fact that she once had her purse robbed there. (Washington Post; 1979)

But I learned the difference between "steal" and "rob" like this.

steal: steal (from victim) ex. steal his wife = have his wife herself
rob: rob (of loot) ex. rob his wife = have the belongings of his wife

So I think loot can be "stolen" or "robbed of", but not "robbed"

What about the sentence from Washington Post above?

Someone might have his purse robbed if the purse is just smashed and only the money inside is stolen, but I'm not sure as a non-native speaker.

gotube
  • 49,596
  • 7
  • 72
  • 154
Englishy
  • 337
  • 2
  • 6
  • The quote you give with the semicolons ":" is worthless without a source, and worthless with a source. – Fattie Dec 18 '23 at 00:01
  • Can't resist (and can't recall where I heard it): "Stealing is when you find something before the other person loses it." :) – John Forkosh Dec 18 '23 at 11:51
  • 1
    "Someone might have his purse robbed if the purse is just smashed and only the money inside is stolen" Aside from the 'smashed' part. This is basically the correct understanding. A purse here would likely be an unlocked bag. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 18:06
  • 1
    @JimmyJames The purse is just smashed?? Purses are not smashed. The Washington Post article could as easily have said: once had her purse stolen there. with exactly the same meaning. – Lambie Dec 18 '23 at 18:59
  • @Lambie Huh? A purse (in this context) is typically a soft cloth or leather bag. So 'smashed' isn't implied at all. To 'rob a purse', you would just open it while no one is looking and take something from it. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 19:05
  • @JimmyJames The OP said smashed and you didn't correct it. At first reading, I thought you had accepted it. And bags are not usually locked. Bags in the sense of a purse. – Lambie Dec 18 '23 at 19:06
  • 1
    @Lambie What does 'aside from' mean to you? – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 19:06
  • @Lambie And it doesn't mean her purse was stolen. If that was the intended meaning, it would be a very unusual and awkward way to say it. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 19:09
  • @JimmyJames Yes, maybe only the contents were taken. That's true. But it could have been stolen. – Lambie Dec 18 '23 at 19:13
  • @Lambie That would not be idiomatic in the US. It would be very a strange way to talk or write. It would be almost as strange as saying someone 'stole the bank' when talking about a robbery. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 19:21
  • @JimmyJames Oh you are so wrong about that. It is not odd at all to say: Her purse was stolen at the library. What is odd here is robbed: She was robbed at the library. They stole her purse. You might want to be careful re saying to me that something is not idiomatic in the US... – Lambie Dec 18 '23 at 19:24
  • 1
    @Lambie Are you feeling OK? I didn't say it was strange to say "Her purse was stolen at the library" I said it's strange to say it was 'robbed' if it was 'stolen'. 'Robbed' and 'stolen' are not the same thing. A robbed purse will still be there after it is, ... robbed. It's like if a grave, or a bank, or a house or a vehicle, is robbed. It's not removed. If the purse was actually stolen, then they would have most likely written that. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 19:46

6 Answers6

22

I'm an attorney here in the USA. Former criminal defense. And a TEFL English teacher.

Theft = taking something that doesn't belong to you.
Robbery = taking something off of someone's person, with or without violence or violent threats.
Burglary = breaking into someone's home or office with the intent to commit a crime, usually theft

All of the above are forms of 'stealing' (if the burglar ends up stealing while there)

EXAMPLES: If you steal someone's car and the person isn't there, it's theft. If you steal someone's car, and the person is standing 10 feet away, that's theft. If you steal someone's car and that person is in the driver's seat, and you force that person out, or tell that person to get out, that's robbery, e.g. car jacking.

If you see someone's wallet fall out of his pants, and you grab it, and run, that's theft. If you take it out of the person's pocket or bag, that is theft. If you tell someone to give you his wallet from his pocket or bag, that is robbery.

In other words, both robbery and theft are forms of 'stealing'.

You cannot 'rob' a thing. You can only rob a person.
You cannot 'steal' a person. You can only steal a thing. (Note: stealing a person is known as... kidnapping.

So the example above you share from the Washington Post is poor grammar.

This is wrong:

She'll work in the New York Public Library, despite the fact that she once had her purse robbed there. (Washington Post; 1979)

This is correct:

She'll work in the New York Public Library, despite the fact that she once had her purse stolen via robbery there.

Or:

She'll work in the New York Public Library, despite the fact that she once was robbed there.

Or:

She'll work in the New York Public Library, despite the fact that she once had her purse stolen there.

Also note: You usually don't say, "I'll work in the library" unless you are in the same building, and the library is one of the areas within that building. If you are outside the library, and you're talking about your place of employment, which is the NY Public Library, you use 'at', i.e. "I'll work at the NY Public Library".

gotube
  • 49,596
  • 7
  • 72
  • 154
Monroe Mann
  • 318
  • 4
  • 13
    "Stolen via robbery"? That doesn't sound like anything a native speaker would say! The natural way to say it is "she was once robbed of her purse there". – TonyK Dec 17 '23 at 16:48
  • 7
    These are technical (legal) definitions, which do not necessarily agree with common usage. When you are in court, or otherwise discussing matters of law, you have the right to say that your definitions are correct and the common usage is wrong. But this site is not about the law, it is about common usage. – Kevin Dec 17 '23 at 18:04
  • 1
    The traditional Jewish understanding of "Thou shalt not steal" is "kidnapping". Because in general the 10 commandments are understood to be capital crimes, and ordinary theft, or even robbery, isn't considered a capital crime (at least under traditional Jewish law) but under some circumstances kidnapping, "stealing a person" is. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Dec 17 '23 at 18:20
  • Regardless of the examples, the second paragraph does define all of the terms correctly, including for common usage. Robbery requires the presence of the person being deprived of their property. Burglary requires some kind of intrusion into a protected space without its person(s) present. Theft is taking what is not yours when the other two don’t apply. AFAIU. – Dúthomhas Dec 17 '23 at 18:27
  • 1
    @Dúthomhas That mostly agrees with my (native AmE speaker, 30ish, no legal experience whatsoever) usage, except that you can still call it theft even if it's also robbery or burglary--I conceptualize robbery and burglary as types of theft, which is a broader category. – Hearth Dec 17 '23 at 20:08
  • 17
    Legal definitions aside, "You cannot 'rob' a thing. You can only rob a person." does not really hold true in general usage. You can "rob a bank" etc. And, regardless of legal defintions, breaking into the bank at night to make off with some money would be commonly referred to as "robbing the bank" not "burglarizing the bank" – David Gelhar Dec 17 '23 at 20:23
  • 1
    @DavidGelhar A human being is a "natural person." A bank is a person, but not a natural person. Banks and other businesses are legally persons. That's why they have first amendment rights. – barbecue Dec 17 '23 at 21:32
  • 1
    I think this is one of those weirdness with the English language. We aren’t robbing the bank. We are robbing people of their money from the bank. – Dúthomhas Dec 17 '23 at 22:32
  • 4
    By your definition, "taking something off of someone's person, with or without violence or violent threats", picking someone's pocket counts as robbery. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Robbery is defined by use of force, not stealth. – Divizna Dec 18 '23 at 00:05
  • 4
    Someone who goes away on vacation and comes home to find their place cleaned out might say "I've been robbed" even though nothing was taken off their person. That wouldn't be a robbery in the legal sense, but people use the term robbery in a more expansive way. – Zach Lipton Dec 18 '23 at 11:35
  • 1
    @DavidGelhar You can also 'rob a grave', 'rob a nest', 'rob a house', 'rob a train', 'rob a country/nation'. And by adding 'of ' you idiomatically say things like, "excessive heat robs an engine of power". – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:27
  • 1
    @Dúthomhas That's not really the case, at least not e.g. the US. The money in the tellers' drawers doesn't belong to any particular person. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:31
  • @Divizna Maybe formally/legally that's true but it's completely idiomatic for someone to exclaim "we've been robbed!" if they find their home has been burglarized. This isn't a legal site and I'm not sure why these legal distinctions are being made. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:34
  • I don't think the quote implies the purse was stolen. It implies it had contents taken from it. If I say 'my car was robbed', it means someone broke into it, stole things from it and left the car. It's a very different meaning from saying 'my car was stolen'. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:59
  • @JimmyJames Oh no, I wasn't speaking legally or formally. I think the issue here is that the verb "rob" has a much wider use than the noun "robbery". When someone picks a pocket, it's theft, not robbery, and the person who did it is a thief, not a robber. But the verb is different: it's used as a direct equivalent of "steal from". So when the victim finds their wallet missing, they say they have been robbed. But, counterintuitive as it may be, it's only the verb that can be used in this situation, not the derived noun. (I guess there's probably some meaning shift history behind it all.) – Divizna Dec 18 '23 at 22:03
  • @Divizna I'm mostly sure I agree with you. My point is that 'had her purse robbed' is obviously (to me) meant to tell you that someone stole from her purses while she wasn't looking. Washington D.C. was the closest major metropolitan area to me growing up, so I'm wondering if there's a regional aspect to this, but the phrasing is unambiguous to me. It does occur to me that the passive 'had' might be confusing but it's completely idiomatic to me. I didn't even notice it until now. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 22:19
  • 1
    @TonyK Lawyers do not speak the same way you do on the streets. Something 'stolen via robbery' is legally and technically correct. It was a) stolen, and b) by way of robbery (as opposed to theft). The manner in which something is stolen is a legal distinction: was it theft, or was it robbery, or was it theft by way of burglary, i.e. stolen via burglary. However, the way I speak as a lawyer is also how I speak on the streets, so if I am robbed, and someone takes my wallet, and someone asks me what happened to my wallet, I'd say, "it was stolen via robbery". :D – Monroe Mann Dec 19 '23 at 04:03
  • @Divizna It depends. If a pickpocket is able to take the wallet without touching me, and without me knowing what is happening, it may still be classified as mere theft. But if the pickpocket makes it known what is happening and/or touches my body while removing the wallet, that could be considered robbery. It could also sometimes be considered robbery if 'force' must be used to remove the wallet, i.e. unsnapping a button on the pocket, or having to use force to pull the wallet from the pocket, or of course, pulling the wallet from ones hand. Every jurisdiction is slightly different. – Monroe Mann Dec 19 '23 at 04:09
  • Note: common usage of English doesn't make it 'right'. 95% of the population do not know the difference between the words moral and morale. Key point: most people think the phrase for getting supportive encouragement is 'moral support. That is patently incorrect. You're not asking for help making ethical decisions. You are seeking help with your mood, i.e. your morale. The correct phrase thus is 'morale support', and yet most people stupidly continue to write and say, 'moral support'. Logically, when you think about it, you realize how stupid that sounds! – Monroe Mann Dec 19 '23 at 04:12
  • As an aside from the point about robbing and stealing - to me (Br Eng), "working at the library" means I am employed by the library, for example as a librarian. "Working in the library" means I am doing my work, whatever that may be, in the library building. Is the same true in Am Eng? – Vicky Dec 19 '23 at 19:21
  • @MonroeMann — there is no authoritative arbiter of correctness of English other than common usage and understanding. And, uh, that common understanding says that you are wrong about moral support -- and "morale support" extremely uncommon. You may also want to consider "moral victory". "Moral support" is support which (at least to the person offering) seems good, right, and virtuous. – mattdm Dec 19 '23 at 19:50
  • @Vicky To me (Am Eng), "working in the library" sounds kind of strange in either sense. I think we'd mostly say "working at the library", whether I am employed there or using it as a quiet place to log into wifi or do research, and figure out the rest from context. – mattdm Dec 19 '23 at 19:53
  • @MonroeMann "common usage of English doesn't make it 'right'". The only arbiter of what's right in English is common usage. Legal terminology one arbitrary jurisdiction does not determine what's correct in common usage anywhere, including within that jurisdiction. Even if you, due to your legal experience, would say something like, "it was stolen via robbery" on the street, that doesn't mean it's how we should be teaching English learners that it's the natural way to express it, because it's not. – gotube Dec 21 '23 at 01:23
11

Stealing is theft, dishonestly taking someone's property with the intent to permanently deprive them of it.

Robbery is theft, by violence or under the threat of violence.

So if I put my purse down, and someone sneakily takes it and runs away, that is theft. But if someone threatens me with a knife to make me give them my purse, that is robbery.

Burgulary is theft from a private building. The burglar breaks in and steals. The robber uses violence to steal. The thief steals.

However, these terms are sometimes misused in non-legal contexts. This seems to be an example of that. The author is using "robbed" as a synonym of "stolen".

But this usage is common enough. You can say "She had her purse robbed" to mean "She was robbed of her purse". Here is an example of both

James K
  • 217,650
  • 16
  • 258
  • 452
  • If so, money can be "robbed"? how about this sentence: He robbed the money. I feel this very odd... – Englishy Dec 17 '23 at 07:42
  • 2
    You do see examples of that. Wiktionary marks this as British slang. But I see use of it in fairly formal contexts. Don't use "rob" to mean "steal" if you don't want to (but accept that other people might) – James K Dec 17 '23 at 07:51
  • 9
    Since the Americans use purse for what I would call a handbag, it could conceivably mean that money was stolen out of her purse (without taking the bag itself). – Kate Bunting Dec 17 '23 at 08:14
  • 2
    @JamesK - I mainly think of 'rob' for 'steal' as mainly North West England, particularly around Merseyside, also as a noun (informally, they may 'go on the rob'). – Michael Harvey Dec 17 '23 at 15:11
  • 1
    In the US, 'her purse was robbed' strongly implies that the purse was not stolen but some of its contents were. It's similar to someone saying that their 'house was robbed' when it was technically burglarized. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:50
  • I think this answer perpetuates a common misconception about jargon — that some technical (in this case, legal) use of a term is the "true" or "right" meaning of a word, and that common English use of the same term more broadly or in other ways is "wrong. The word "rob" has been used as a synonym for "steal" since before the 13th century — see Merriam-Webster's usage note. But, this isn't legal.stackexchange.com! – mattdm Dec 19 '23 at 19:38
  • @mattdm Actually my notion is that the "with/without violence" distinction between theft and robbery is part of natural speech. It certainly is part of mine. I recognise in my answer that there is some variation here, and using "rob" as a synonym of "steal" is done. But I think the distinction does exist, and not only in the technical or legal language. – James K Dec 20 '23 at 00:29
11

A quick glance in Merriam-Webster online shows several different senses of "rob" beyond the technical legal definition of "taking something from a person".

Either 1.b.2 "to take the contents of (a receptacle)" or 1.c "to take away as loot : STEAL" could apply to "she once had her purse robbed there", depending on whether the purse itself or its contents were stolen.

David Gelhar
  • 211
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
    To rob the cookie jar means to take the cookies. To steal the cookie jar means to take the jar (with the cookies inside). – user1908704 Dec 18 '23 at 14:24
  • 2
    This is IMO the correct answer. If someone 'robs a safe', they took the contents and left the safe. If they 'stole a safe', they took the whole thing. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 17:53
4

David Gelhar's answer is correct, but I think some elaboration and examples might help here. Your understanding of the meaning of the Washington Post sentence is correct and I think a lot of the answers here do more to confuse the situation by bringing in legal terminology. The sentence is not from a legal brief and legal definitions are not typically relevant to general usage.

Someone might have his purse robbed if the purse is just smashed and only the money inside is stolen.

This is correct (with the exception of 'smashed' and it could be something other than money taken.) When someone or something is 'robbed' it means something was taken from the subject. The best example I can think of to demonstrate this is with relation to a 'safe' (a type of box for holding valuables):

  • "The safe was robbed": items were stolen from the safe
  • "The safe was stolen": the entire safe itself was taken

Whether force was involved does not matter. Whether it's a person (legally or otherwise) does not matter. A person can be robbed or stolen. These are not synonyms; they have very different meanings.

I find it a little surprising that people actually think violence or the threat of violence is a requirement in the general meaning of 'robbed'. Perhaps this is a North American or US English thing but violence can be and often is part of robbing (e.g.: 'armed robbery') but is not required. As evidence of this, we can look at ngrams for 'safe was robbed'. Here's an example excerpt from "The Four-Pools Mystery" by Jean Webster:

“Good morning Arnold,” he said with a certain grim pleasantness. “I have just been making a discovery. It appears that Mose's ha'nt amounted to more than we gave him credit for. The safe was robbed during the night.”

“The safe robbed!” I cried. “How much was taken?”

No act of violence is implied, or assumed. I encourage anyone who is still dubious about this to try searching for things like "safe was robbed last night" on ngrams.

I actually found a reference to an example of 'purse robbed' in the book "Yesterday's Faces: Violent lives" by Robert Sampson.

In the first story, Mr. Laxworthy arranges to have a lady's apartment broken into and her purse robbed. Nothing valuable is taken -- only a pass to board the French battleship in the harbor.

Clearly the implication is that the purse was not stolen, just one item from it and this was a surreptitious act. Not one of violence.

JimmyJames
  • 1,270
  • 11
  • 13
  • Violence does matter, though, at least in situations where the container is something you’d expect to have on you (rather than, say, a house or car). “She had her purse robbed” very strongly implies that the removal of (the contents of) the purse happened through use or threat of violence. If she left her purse on the table and the money was gone when she came back, it would sound very odd to say that she had her purse robbed – you’d either use a different verb (rifled, picked, etc.) or say she had her money stolen from her purse. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 18 '23 at 20:34
  • 2
    @JanusBahsJacquet I'm not sure where you are getting that idea. The most common idiomatic thing for someone to say if they find their home was burglarized when they were away is "we've been robbed!". Is there a threat of violence when a grave is robbed? What about when someone's team loses a game and someone says "we were robbed". Conflating legal terms and general English terms is an error. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 20:46
  • 2
    @JanusBahsJacquet I have had things stolen from my car at night while I was sleeping. I absolutely referred to that as my car being robbed. If I said my car was stolen, it would be incorrect. – JimmyJames Dec 18 '23 at 20:48
  • 1
    Hence why I specified “where the container is something you’d expect to have on you”. A house, grave, car or safe is not something you carry on your person. I’m not talking about legal definitions, but about how the terms are used in normal, everyday conversation. If someone looks distressed, you ask them what’s happened, and they say, “I got robbed!”, that very, very strongly implies that they were mugged, not that someone picked their pockets or hacked their bank account. I also never said anything about stealing cars, which is an entirely different and unrelated thing. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 19 '23 at 01:59
  • @JanusBahsJacquet " that very, very strongly implies that they were mugged." Uh, no it doesn't. It could mean many different things including being pickpocketed. Can I ask in what part of the world you learned English? – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 15:53
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Maybe this could help. How would you succinctly describe someone stealing items from a woman's handbag while she was not watching it? 4 words or less. – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 16:02
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Do you disagree with this definition and example? "to take money or property illegally from a place, organization, or person, often using violence:" [emphasis mine] 2nd example: "My wallet's gone! I've been robbed!" – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 16:06
  • No, I agree with that definition, and the example. I can’t quite define what determines how strong the implication of force (a better word than violence) is, but it does vary to me. A surprised cry that “I’ve/We’ve been robbed!” doesn’t imply force (in fact, it rules it out – if force were used or threatened, you’d know about it and wouldn’t be surprised), but a description that “I was robbed on my way home from work” does. As for the unattended handbag, I’d probably say it was picked or rifled, or I’d phrase it differently (“her XYZ was stolen from her handbag”). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 19 '23 at 17:43
  • @JanusBahsJacquet " I’d probably say it was picked or rifled, or I’d phrase it differently (“her XYZ was stolen from her handbag”)" You need to keep in mind that this was a newspaper article so word count matters. 'Picked' and 'rifled' sound foreign/unsual to me as someone who has lived in the region of the paper for my entire life (including when it was written.) 'Had her purse robbed' does sound completely normal and precise. It means someone took her money or other valuables from her bag. ... – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 17:49
  • So essentially what you are saying is that the Washington Post writer didn't mean the obvious thing that people in the region of the paper would understand but rather they used a wrong, archaic, or some other region's meaning of the word and that incorrect usage was not caught by the editors. Essentially you are denying my personal experience. – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 17:52
  • No, I’m doing neither of those things. For one thing, the WP quote doesn’t say anything about whether the purse-robbing was forceful or not (to me, it strongly implies that it was; to you, clearly, it doesn’t), and the force aspect is not mentioned in the question at all, so I wasn’t referring to the WP quote. My point was that the people who are saying force is a component of robbery are not mistaken. I don’t know if it’s a Pond thing (my English is a bit of a US/UK admixture), it may be, but their personal experiences are as valid as yours. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 19 '23 at 18:34
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I'm not saying force isn't relevant. I'm saying it is not a requirement for the word 'robbed' to apply and I backed that up evidence that you accepted. I would argue that 'robbery' does have a much stronger implication of force. But someone's experience using English in the UK is not a valid experience of how English is used or understood in the US. If I were to assert that the US meaning of 'liberal' applies to an article in a UK newspaper, would you think that's valid? – JimmyJames Dec 19 '23 at 19:59
0

Robbing someone is the physical act of aggression by means of force or intimidation through personal confrontation in an intended threatening manner, mostly to obtain valuables in their immediate possession, whereas stealing isn't an act of physical aggression towards a person directly or to obtain items in their possession but instead an act violating personal space in a to obtain items or property in their absence which doesn't require using force in any threatening or confrontational manner.

The real difference in the eyes of the law is whether the act itself actually puts a persons (or peoples) life in immediate danger and/or their safety in jeopardy in some unnecessary reckless manner. Or more simply put, it's the difference between getting 1 to 5 or 10 to 20 in prison.

izraul
  • 1
  • 2
-1

This seems to be codified law. The implementation depends on jurisdiction, but the essential difference is obvious from etymology:

  • to steal, stealth

  • to rob, rip off, bereft, reave, rave, (further uncertain)

See dictionary.com for attestation.

So a pick-pocket steals and gets caught, but Jack the Ripper murdered whores and was never caught – two sides of not the same coin.

Rape of the Sabines (Sabinae Raptae)—Latin rapio (“C. In partic. 1 To carry off by force; to seize, rob, ravish; to plunder, ravage, lay waste, take by assault, carry by force”, L&S)—indicates that rape is a secondary development: to rob of virginity. Modern English would normally speak of stealing a woman without brute force. Another example is German an-graben or an-baggern, which may mean "to groom, flirt", literally "to dig, excavate", but it is trivially obvious that the first compares to English grab, grope.

From the perspective of a thieving hoodlum there is no difference, if they can get away with it. Iff!

vectory
  • 218
  • 2
  • 12