steal

Picture an Anglo-Saxon slipping through the shadows with someone else’s tool under his cloak: secrecy was built into the earliest meaning of Old English stelan. The verb reached Middle English as stelen and eventually became steal, while its secretive core escaped into phrases such as “steal away,” “steal a glance,” and “steal a kiss.” By the 1540s, English speakers were already using it for taking someone’s words or ideas without credit; centuries later, sports commentators made “steal” a routine word for snatching a ball or base. Its ultimate ancestry is disputed: etymologists connect it tentatively with a Proto-Indo-European root associated with robbing, but some specialists find no convincing Indo-European explanation. So the safest memory hook is Germanic and wonderfully literal: steal began as taking something while trying not to be seen—and still does.