Purloynen

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. Taken dishonestly from someone else, especially in a quiet or secret way, without the owner's permission
2. Having been secretly carried off or appropriated from another person's possession by theft
3. Describing an item that someone has quietly removed and kept for themselves without right or consent

Etymology: "Purloined" is the past participle of "purloin," and the verb is an odd survivor of a French prefix that English later dropped. It comes from Anglo-Norman "purloigner," meaning "to put far away" or "to remove," built from Old French "pur-" (a variant of "pour," "forth" or "far") and "loign," "far," from Latin "longe." The original sense was simply to remove something to a distance, with no suggestion of theft, and English borrowed it around the 1400s in that neutral meaning. The sense of stealing developed as the word was used for taking things away, especially when the taking was secret or dishonest. Over the following centuries, "purloin" narrowed to mean stealing something quietly, often a small item or a document. The spelling "purloyne" in older English texts shows how the word was pronounced and written before standardization.