[f. STEAL v.]
1. The act, or an act, of stealing; a theft; the thing stolen or purloined. Chiefly U.S. colloq.
[In the first quot. the word is prob. of different formation; if not an error for or variant of STALE sb.1, it may represent an OE. *stǽl f. OTeut. *stǣl- ablaut-var. of *stel- STEAL v.]
c. 1200. Trin. Coll. Hom., 79. Gif þe upfele man … teð him to unwrenches, to stele, oðer refloc, oðer swikedom [etc.].
1825. Jamieson, Steal. 1. A theft. Aberd. 2. The thing stolen. Ibid.
1890. Sat. Rev., 26 July, 110/1. This is an audacious steal from ‘In a Gondola’!
1891. Kipling, Light that Failed, iii. ‘Yes, it is rather a cold blooded steal,’ said Torpenhow critically.
b. U.S. and colonial. A piece of dishonesty or fraud on a large scale; a corrupt or fraudulent transaction in politics.
1884. Reading (Pa.) Morn. Herald, 15 April. When the makers of the constitution of the United States put in that apparently harmless clause giving Congress the power to legislate for the ‘general welfare,’ they little thought what jobs and steals it would ultimately be made the excuse for.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., III. lxiv. II. 471. Rings are the cause of both peculation and jobbery, although St. Louis has had no ‘big steal.’
1891. Weekly Empire (Toronto), 3 Sept., 4/2. The late gigantic steal.
† 2. An act of going furtively. Obs. rare–1.
1590. Tarlton’s News Purgatory, 29. The vickar … forbad it openly: yet it was not so deepely inveighed against, but that diuerse Sundayes they would make a steale thither to breakefast.
3. a. Golf. (see quot. 1897.) b. Base-ball. A stolen run from one base to another.
1842. G. F. Carnegie, Golfiana, in Golfiana Misc. (1887), 81. A most disgusting steal.
1867. Poems on Golf, 53. Though such long steals are now but rarely done.
1891. N. Crane, Base-ball, iv. 36. The runner … must, therefore, look out for an exceptional chance to make the steal.
1897. Encycl. Sport, I. 473/2. (Golf) Steal, a long putt holed unexpectedly.
