How to Use purloin in a Sentence

purloin

verb
  • Stealthily, from its roost on the ceiling, one bat reached out and purloined his sun hat.
    Natasha Frost, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2023
  • What the man purloined wasn’t just a pair of shoes but something like an emblem of identity.
    Amy X. Wang, New York Times, 26 Sep. 2023
  • Nearby is the kitchen that Pelosi and her fellow students used to sneak into at night to purloin ice cream.
    Jason Bell; Fashion Editor: Miguel Enamorado, Harper's BAZAAR, 23 Sep. 2019
  • In other works, Parker has purloined objects, squashed them, melted them down and recast them, scratched them, and fired bullets at them.
    Andrew Dickson, The New Yorker, 7 June 2017
  • For years visitors have purloined pieces of Uluru as souvenirs.
    National Geographic, 15 Sep. 2019
  • The peasants who lived nearby, curious what valuable plants the king was guarding in his garden, swept in by dark after the guard’s departure and purloined the potato plants for their own plots.
    Bill St. John, The Denver Post, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Ronald Reagan insisted his glossy locks were naturally brown and claimed that reporters had purloined clippings from his barber's floor to prove him wrong.
    Author: Roxanne Roberts, Anchorage Daily News, 10 Nov. 2019
  • Ronald Reagan insisted his glossy locks were naturally brown and claimed that reporters had purloined clippings from his barber’s floor to prove him wrong.
    Washington Post, 6 Nov. 2019
  • There are jokes to be cracked, Nazis to be punched, explosives to be detonated and ancient artifacts to be discovered and purloined — none more coveted than the Antikythera, a.k.a.
    Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 29 June 2023
  • The rightful inheritance that Purlie means to purloin by madcap deception is another promissory note whose power drives the action of the play.
    Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2023
  • Even John Lahr, the New Yorker theater critic who co-wrote her triumphant one-woman show, ended up suing her for allegedly purloining profits by using bits from the show in her cabaret act.
    BostonGlobe.com, 18 Oct. 2019
  • Nonetheless, the Shadow Brokers had purloined the capability to penetrate top-secret servers around the world.
    Tim Weiner, The New Republic, 27 Mar. 2023
  • Enlisting one of the diner's regular customers, Benny (Azim Rizk), a mechanic who has the hots for her, as an accomplice, Priscilla manages to get away with purloining the loot.
    Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 Mar. 2018
  • By happenstance or not, in the days and weeks after the meeting with the Russian lawyer, emails purloined from Democratic computers were made public, which investigators tied to Russian hacking.
    Peter Baker, Alaska Dispatch News, 13 July 2017
  • Moreover, Trump’s base clearly loved the idea of Russians purloining and publishing information that would damage Clinton.
    Colin Campbell, New Republic, 21 Dec. 2017
  • Cheap, second-hand, and purloined weapons comprised Hamas’ deadly makeshift arsenal that fueled a devastating, multi-pronged attack on Israel over the weekend.
    Isabelle Chapman, CNN, 13 Oct. 2023
  • The film actually purloins its main talents from the 1983 documentary Breakin’ ’n’ Enterin’ from director Topper Carew.
    Nicholas Bell, SPIN, 19 Dec. 2023
  • Investigators say the hackers also purloined more than a million detailed call records from telecom companies.
    Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, New York Times, 7 Mar. 2023
  • People used to laugh at my suggestion that computer viruses were being planted and user info was being purloined by the same companies who sell us security software.
    Jonathan Takiff, Philly.com, 18 Oct. 2017
  • Digital technology has allowed such leakers as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to purloin much vaster reams of data with significantly greater ease.
    Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022
  • The attacks on Friday are likely to raise significant questions about whether the growing number of countries developing and stockpiling cyberweapons can avoid having those same tools purloined and turned against their own citizens.
    Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 12 May 2017
  • Police say further investigation revealed the individuals had purloined the paper products — which are a scarce commodity amid the coronavirus pandemic — and the linens from a maid’s cart at a nearby hotel.
    Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr. 2020
  • Everyone knows that data like credit cards and even Social Security numbers are routinely purloined.
    Steven Levy, WIRED, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Its most alarming prop is a coffee cup, accidentally purloined, and what passes for a mastermind is a housing bureaucracy that’s evil only in its inefficiency.
    Jesse Green, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2023
  • Our plan to purloin dogecoin to purchase purifiers pursuant to our planetary progression terminates.
    Aaron Pressman, Fortune, 7 May 2021
  • Federal prosecutors now say China used the program to purloin sensitive technology.
    Penn Bullock, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'purloin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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