What's the difference between purloining and theft?

Purloining


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Purloin

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And those who get their kicks from purloining stuff that they’re expected to pay for were especially grumpy.
  • (2) New York district judge J Paul Oetken noted the difficulty of determining copyright infringement in the historical fiction realm where US laws did not protect repetition of known historical facts, only the purloining of imaginative ideas relating to them.
  • (3) Analysing the list afterwards I recalled that as a young man of 20 I had done a similar accounting, for three years, in a blank wireless operator's logbook purloined from the Royal Air Force.
  • (4) Other Poe titles: Stories: The Murders in the Rue Morgue; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Purloined Letter; The Masque of the Red Death; The Imp of the Perverse; The Pit and the Pendulum.
  • (5) Case (forename redundant, like any good hard-boiled antihero) is a recognisable type purloined from detective fiction: hard-bitten, brave, apparently cynical but in fact humane.
  • (6) Osborne has purloined the word “affordable” to mean the opposite – an 80% of market rent that typical council renters can’t afford.
  • (7) Corruption is a cross-national issue and weak financial oversight only encourages the abuse of power and fiscal malfeasance by offering a safe and easily accessible hiding place for purloined funds.
  • (8) It’s purloined material, taken by unknown people for unknown reasons, then distributed, no questions asked, by media organisations around the world, including the Guardian, as if this complex criminal act was some sort of glorious trivia windfall – a cargo of fun washed up on the beach.
  • (9) Six points and a game in hand over their nearest challengers, the characteristics of their play at both ends of this victory bode well – two quality goals in the opening 10 minutes and a clinical purloining of the points with less than a quarter of an hour remaining – their subservience to a spirited Hull in between forgotten as they enter the international break.
  • (10) I smoked my first adult-sized fag at the age of 10: a John Player Superking purloined from my best friend's dad while he was innocently buying us Funny Feet.
  • (11) The Lib Dems have always been peeved that George Osborne has sought to purloin the credit for what the Lib Dems regard as one of their big wins in government.
  • (12) 9.52pm BST 64 min: Neymar again fails to beat his man, Carvajal watching his tricks and then purloining the ball before the Brazilian could get near the box.
  • (13) The reporters conferred with Snowden to negotiate release of the material and then used their extensive backgrounds covering national security to explore the purloined files and reveal their stunning import, describing how the NSA gathered information on untold millions of unsuspecting – and unsuspected – Americans, plugged into the communications links of major internet companies and coerced companies like Yahoo and Google into turning over data about their customers,” the statement announcing the awards said.
  • (14) I stood in the bathroom naked and counted all the mini hotel toiletries that I have purloined when on tour.
  • (15) Warner needs at least one film to begin introducing its lineup of masked crime fighters – and doing it this way avoids any accusation that the studio has simply purloined Marvel's hugely successful blueprint (which involved giving each hero his own movie before teaming them up in The Avengers).
  • (16) The name Goldfinger was purloined from the architect Erno Goldfinger, who did not feel so relaxed about it .

Theft


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.
  • (n.) The thing stolen.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Cruddas, who has several BNP councillors in his Barking constituency, told MPs in the House of Commons: "What's been uncovered in the internal workings of the BNP appears to be systematic illegality in terms of data protection, bugging, money laundering, theft and the operation of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000."
  • (2) In this investigation, reanalysis of responses to case vignettes obtained from 436 psychologists, psychiatrists, and internists revealed that on the issue of confidentiality management, these health care providers discriminate among cases involving: Premeditated harm to others, socially irresponsible acts with possible dire consequences to self or others, and minor theft.
  • (3) Although she's been performing since 2000 – in the punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls , in a controversial conjoined-twin mime act called Evelyn Evelyn (they wear a specially constructed two-person dress and have been castigated by disability groups for presenting conjoined twins as circus freaks, an accusation she denies) – in her new band, Amanda Palmer And The Grand Theft Orchestra , she's suddenly become a kind of phenomenon.
  • (4) Though the exercises have given the US a chance to vent its frustration at what appears to be state-sponsored espionage and theft on an industrial scale, China has been belligerent.
  • (5) The ICE's Khaalid Walls confirmed the incident took place, and AMC responded with a statement: "Movie theft is something we take very seriously, and our theatre managers contact the Motion Picture Association of America any time it's suspected that someone may be illegally recording content on screen.
  • (6) That level of thefts is just not acceptable – logging each missing phone takes up a lot of police time."
  • (7) Postaddiction crime rates among narcotic (principally heroin) addicts in five different areas (theft, violence, dealing, confidence games, and other crime) were found to be substantially related to a number of preaddiction characteristics, especially criminal activity and drug and alcohol use prior to addiction to narcotics.
  • (8) This dramatic fall has been repeated across nearly every category of crime, including the big "volume" crimes such as burglary and car break-ins and thefts where better security and alarms have brought about even deeper falls in the crime levels.
  • (9) Banda, who has turned to lecturing abroad since she lost power, told an audience in the Netherlands this month that when she was alerted by an EU official about the theft, she knew she had no choice but to start fighting against corruption.
  • (10) Grand Theft Auto series Mostly about running around the streets with a big gun causing all kinds of chaos.
  • (11) And that being the case, should they be remanded in custody over the possession of an Oyster card not registered to them and the theft of a mirror?
  • (12) There has been a spate of thefts of rhino horns and elephant tusks from European museums, zoos and auction houses in recent years, amid a rising illegal trade in poached or stolen ivory .
  • (13) The new ban will mean that an offender who receives a simple caution for a shoplifting offence should not get another simple caution for further theft-related offences within the next two years.
  • (14) Power theft in Karachi and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas alone is believed to cost the state £138m in lost revenues .
  • (15) Car theft led to a third sentence, and it was during that time that he was to meet Bruce Reynolds , the mastermind of the Great Train Robbery.
  • (16) John Madelin, CEO at RelianceACSN and a former vice president responsible for the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, said: “We thought the previous breach of 500 million user accounts was huge, but 1 billion is monumental.” Tyler Moffitt, senior threat research analyst at Webroot, said: “All of the data stolen, including emails, passwords and security questions, make a potent package for identify theft.
  • (17) The Liberal Democrats' biggest donor, who has been on the run for three years after being convicted of a multimillion pound theft, is hiding in the Dominican Republic under a false British identity, the Guardian can disclose.
  • (18) Too many still write down pin numbers, contrary to all the advice from the banks, and are thereby at risk of theft.
  • (19) And of course, if the software that infects your machine is malicious, there's the serious risk of identity theft.
  • (20) Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation , gave a wide-ranging address to US media regulators that attacked internet news aggregation as "theft" and claimed that advertising-only business models were dead.

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