to steal someone's heart
23
3.6
- idiom
- Informal
- - Well, she saved his life and stole his heart.
Examples
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The little boy's kindness stole the teacher's heart over time.
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she stole his heart
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Whatever he had, he sure stole her heart away.
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You have stolen my heart.
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Then he stole my heart.
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'Cause you've opened my eyes and stolen my heart
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- She's stolen my heart.
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He stole my heart, Jimmy.
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He searched endlessly for the girl who had stolen his heart.
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Narrator 2: Fernand would love to steal Mercedes's heart, but she only loves Edmond.
Fiction book (2001)
Synonyms
75
3.0
To attract and hold someone's interest or affection
45
3.3
To make people like and admire you
31
4.5
Make someone feel very impressed and strongly attracted
1
7.4
Make a person fall deeply and quickly in love with you
Antonyms
How Loved
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'to win someone’s affection' is directly inferable from combining 'steal' (take, often secretly) with 'heart' (the seat of emotions/love): together they plausibly mean 'take someone's feelings.' This metaphorical mapping (heart = affection, steal = take) is common cross-linguistically and follows a transparent compositional pattern that a B1 learner who knows the constituents can reasonably deduce.
Etymology
The idiom steal someone's heart comes from the image of a thief who quietly steals a small treasure: the heart stands for a person's love and feelings. So, when someone steals your heart, they have won your love or deep affection.