stolen

Pluralstolens

1. 1
   verb

   Past participle of steal.

   The paintings had been stolen before the museum even opened that morning.

   Several confidential documents were stolen from the locked office.

   Note

   The form that completes steal after have and be, while the simple past takes stole: they stole it, it was stolen, they have stolen it. The -en ending comes down from Old English stolen. Because steal can also mean moving quietly, the participle also appears in active perfects with no object at all, as in she had stolen out of the room, where nothing is taken and nothing is passive.

2. 2
   adjective

   Taken unlawfully from its rightful owner; acquired through theft.

   Investigators traced the stolen artwork to a private collector overseas.

   He was caught trying to sell stolen phones at a street market.

3. 3
   noundialectalMulticultural London EnglishUScountable

   An object that has been taken by theft.

   He got pulled over driving a stolen with fake plates on it.

   The market was flooded with stolens after the warehouse robbery.

   Note

   Street speech in the US and in Multicultural London English lets the participle stand alone as a noun for the stolen thing itself. Most often it is a car: Yb Tak30ver's 2019 line about driving stolens, foreigns sets it beside foreign cars. It takes the regular plural stolens. In neutral writing, say stolen goods or a stolen car, and let the ordinary adjective carry the meaning.

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