Topics on Grammar - Rob x Steal

ROB x STEAL
(to take something illegally)  

 Rob - Steal

  ◊ You rob a person or place.
 ◊ You steal something that does not belong to you.

A robber or a thief

  ◊  robs a place (for example, a bank), or a person, of something.
  ◊  steals something from a place or a person

                    

 Examples :

  ▪ A bank robbery took place this morning.
  ▪ A gang of armed robbers forced their way into the bank.

  ▪ The thieves robbed the bank.
  ▪ The bank was robbed of a large amount of money.
  ▪ The gang stole a large amount of money from the bank.
          
  ▪ The thieves also robbed the customers of their wallets.
  ▪ The robbers stole their wallets from the customers.
  ▪ The customers' wallets were stolen by the robbers/thieves.

Both the verbs steal and rob have similar meanings. However, there is an important difference between these verbs, we use them like this:

to steal something from somebody: eg. my watch was stolen, he stole my watch, they stole my laptop from me

to rob somebody/a bank/a shop/ a house etc: eg. a man robbed me (of my watch), the bank was robbed yesterday, my local gas station was robbed at the weekend.

The important thing to remember is that you can steal something from someone but you can’t steal someone!  A person can be robbed (ie: have their property taken from them) but not stolen (taken away by the thief).

Now try doing some exercises on these links:

http://www.tolearnenglish.com/exercises/exercise-english-2/exercise-english-20981.php

http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/328.html

To end, watch this short movie that was made as an alert on how easy it is to steal a bike in New York City.