grand theft
20
6.8
- noun
- /ɡrænd θɛft/
- Formal
:
hurto mayor
- After a lengthy trial, she was found guilty of grand theft for taking a luxury car without permission.
- grand theft auto
- grand theft charge
- convicted of grand theft
Examples
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Ada County prosecutors dropped 12 other felony counts of grand theft and one count of burglary in exchange for the guilty plea.
Blog text (30) -
Hence the initial charge of felony grand theft.
Blog text (34) -
All three men have been charged with grand theft.
Blog text (8) -
Yes, within days of her felony grand theft arrest, she was having polling done using the campaign funds.
Blog text (34) -
You're under arrest for grand theft.
-
At 11:34 a.m., a woman called to report a grand theft.
Blog text (17) -
Unauthorized access to someone's private computer files is considered grand theft in Massachusetts.
Fiction book (1991) -
Monteilh served time in prison for forgery, fraud, and grand theft and was involved in scamming $157,000 from two Orange County women he befriended in a gym.
Blog text (17) -
The police arrested him for grand theft after he stole several expensive paintings from the gallery.
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The law states that grand theft is considered a felony if the stolen property exceeds a certain value.
Synonyms
356
1.1
An act of taking someone else's property without permission to keep it
45
7.2
Stealing something that belongs to someone else to keep it
14
5.6
The act of taking things that belong to other people without permission
8
7.9
Stealing things worth more than a set amount counts as a serious crime
5
1.0
Taking something that belongs to another person without permission
Antonyms
- Formal
3
6.9
Taking something worth less than a set amount, for example a small item from a shop
How Serious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'grand' (meaning large/major or informally a thousand) combined with 'theft' (stealing) yields the idea of a large or legally significant theft. A B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer it denotes stealing of substantial value, even if they may not know jurisdictional legal thresholds.
Etymology
Grand theft comes from a simple image: imagine someone stealing a big, expensive thing—like a car or a safe of money. The word grand means 'large' or 'very valuable' and theft means 'stealing', so grand theft means taking property worth a lot of money.