How to Use thieve in a Sentence

thieve

verb
  • They can be seen thieving food from the backs of pick-up trucks and bait from sport boats.
    — John Schandelmeier, Anchorage Daily News, 29 Aug. 2019
  • Cain stole 26 bags a year ago, while Yelich thieved 16 of his own.
    — Michael Beller, SI.com, 19 Feb. 2018
  • Neo-Nazis and the KKK want to thieve my right to joy and grow fear in its place.
    — Brittany Packnett, SELF, 21 Aug. 2017
  • But many African states have not helped their cause, often because thieving politicians are still in charge.
    — The Economist, 10 Oct. 2019
  • No one is fooled, including those thieved by the shrinkage of the dollars in their possession.
    — John Tamny, Forbes.com, 13 Apr. 2025
  • Fleck is bullied by thieving poor kids and drunken rich guys, goaded to the point of murder by the meanness of the world.
    — New York Times, 3 Oct. 2019
  • Give the nesting plovers a wide berth and keep a close eye on thieving gulls hovering to snatch your roast beef from Kelly’s.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 2 May 2018
  • Rats today are widely seen as filthy, thieving vectors of deadly diseases like plague and hantavirus.
    — WIRED, 7 Oct. 2023
  • For years, the party denigrated the south as a thieving leech on the resources of the more prosperous north.
    — Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2020
  • This later-season standout stars Cleese as a bumbling, flower-thieving highwayman who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
    — Devan Coggan, EW.com, 4 Oct. 2019
  • Taught young by her grandmother to thieve and pilfer, Ivy’s punishment when caught by her mother is to be sent back to China.
    — Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post, 1 Nov. 2020
  • Across roughly two months, the cameras collected data — though some fell victim to storm water or thieving raccoons, Ivory said.
    — Rachel Raposas, People.com, 18 Feb. 2025
  • This is a world of murderers for hire, sleazy lobbyists, incompetent lawyers, sketchy doctors, and thieving ex-husbands.
    — Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic, 8 May 2025
  • Syrians generally viewed thieving civil servants as an inevitable part of life.
    — John Wendle, Scientific American, 17 Dec. 2015
  • Now, an enterprising (and thieving) hacking operation is trying to extract some of that cash.
    — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 29 Apr. 2017
  • The man Stockton police want for stealing parking meters chills out near a possible object of thieving desires.
    — Sacbee, sacbee.com, 16 May 2017
  • Cattle raiding and horse thieving were common crimes in the Wild West, but bee rustling is a relatively new offense for the lawbooks.
    — Lucas Foglia, National Geographic, 3 May 2019
  • Which explains why Robertson is determined to chase down more pucks, thieve them back on the forecheck, and create opportunities for himself and others that way.
    — Jonas Siegel, The Athletic, 22 Nov. 2024
  • Kern survives in the impoverished, urban environment of a favela by thieving, wielding knives, competing in martial arts and being on the run.
    — Lou Fancher, The Mercury News, 3 Apr. 2017
  • Last year, a farmer in Thirthahalli in the state of Karnataka resorted to painting his pet dog with tiger stripes to protect his coffee crop from thieving monkeys.
    — Fox News, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Females are turning out in droves to see the third installment in the long-dormant franchise about a group of thieving magicians, buying up 54 percent of all tickets sold so far.
    — Pamela McClintock, HollywoodReporter, 15 Nov. 2025
  • Which heaps further discredit on Keynes’s observation that governments thieve wealth stealthily with inflation.
    — John Tamny, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
  • Surveillance of thieving seabirds for avian flu could potentially aid in detecting the disease early on, and in doing so, be an important step in seabird conservation, per the study.
    — Alexa Robles-Gil, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Sep. 2024
  • The emotional stakes — which also involve a thieving street urchin (Baltasar Espinach) the De la Vegas adopt — are real.
    — Television Critic, Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2026
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh, composed about 4,000 years ago, follows a king who searches the world for a plant that can restore youth, only to lose the plant to a thieving snake.
    — Jordan D. Metzl, The Atlantic, 19 Feb. 2026
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh, composed about 4,000 years ago, follows a king who searches the world for a plant that can restore youth, only to lose the plant to a thieving snake.
    — Will Gottsegen, The Atlantic, 20 Feb. 2026
  • All this carries a whiff of the Somozas, the brutal, thieving dictators whom the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979.
    — The Economist, 26 Apr. 2018
  • The first episode of this nature mini-series focuses on animals who will steal, cheat and fight for food, including kleptomaniac crabs, thieving macaques and cannibalistic lizards.
    — Andrew R. Chow, New York Times, 25 Apr. 2018
  • The local partners eventually rebelled, denouncing the Zetas as thieving outsiders while also adopting their predatory tactics.
    — Arkansas Online, 1 Dec. 2019
  • The start of the conflict revealed that one tool the Israelis used to target the Ayatollah and his top crew of thieving monsters was their extended hack of the traffic cameras outside his Tehran compound.
    — Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant, 21 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'thieve.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: