Shoplifting

noun, verb

noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The action of stealing goods from a shop, store or other place of business. uncountable

    "[…]William Grove for robbing his Master of twenty-sive Guineas ; and Catharine Knox for Shoplifting."

  2. 2
    the act of stealing goods that are on display in a store wordnet
  3. 3
    A theft from a shop during trading hours. countable

    "In high school, he bleached his hair and began a series of shopliftings and bicycle thefts."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of shoplift form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms
abstractionannexationappropriationconversionconveyanceembezzlement

Example

More examples

"I don't know what to do about his shoplifting."

Etymology

By surface analysis, shoplift + -ing. The noun sense (from 1690) predates the verb.

Related phrases

kamikaze shoplifting

More for "shoplifting"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.