Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🍂 To make soft noise 🍂 A soft sound 🦌 To search for food 🐄 To steal animals
to rustle

to rustle

5 9.5
To steal animals like cattle from farms
  • verb
  • /ˈrʌsəl/
  • US
: robar ganado
  • I know this because three years ago, he was rustling cattle from the B.C. Corrigan Cattle Company of Lubbock, Texas.
  • rustle cattle

Examples

  • In years past, these people would have been hanged in the town square for rustling cattle or something.

    Blog text (21)

  • Old enough to rustle cattle.

    Hang 'em High (1968)

  • I want to rustle some cattle and then go back to my luxury.

  • Were they rustled for their meat?

    Fiction book (1997)

  • I can rustle cattle.

    Ideal Home (2018)

  • Jody Janice, wanted for cattle rustling in the state of Wyoming, $425 dead or alive.

    Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

  • The rancher caught him rustling cattle from his herd late at night.

  • The police set up a sting operation to catch the thieves rustling cattle in the area.

  • After years of evading capture, he was finally arrested for rustling cattle across state lines.

Synonyms

to lift
vsto rustle
  • Informal
35 8.1

To steal something secretly from a shop or person

refers specifically to taking livestock illegally rather than general theft

Antonyms

to return
∞ 1.0

Give something back to its owner or the place it came from

Phrasal Verbs

to rustle up
  • Informal
11 5.1

To quickly make or find something, often food, using what you have

How Illegal

to embezzle
28 8.1
to rustle
  • US
5 9.5
to steal
∞ 1.0
to shoplift
39 5.0

Surface Forms

rustle infinitive
rustled past
rustled past participle
rustling present participle
rustles third person singular

Etymology

In the American West, rustle grew a new meaning: people would quietly move animals at night, and because the animals and brush made soft noises, 'to rustle' came to mean 'steal livestock'. That's why a cattle thief is called a rustler.