Word.ws English Dictionary

scene-stealing

Syllables: scene-steal·ingUK/ˈsiːn ˈstiːlɪŋ/

scene-stealing adjective: that steals the scene (“dominates a performance through charisma, humour, or powerful acting”).

scene-stealing: that steals the scene (“dominates a performance through charisma, humour, or powerful acting”)
Image: Stanley Kramer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

scene-stealing (comparative more scene-stealing, superlative most scene-stealing)

  1. That steals the scene (“dominates a performance through charisma, humour, or powerful acting”).
    • The Pied Piper (20th Century-Fox) pipes sumptuous Monty ("The Beard") Woolley out of his wheel chair for the first time since he began playing The Man Who Came to Dinner (TIME, Jan. 26) three years ago. The change is good for him. The belligerent old nanny goat turns into a very human portrait of a...1942 August 10, “Cinema: New Picture [film review of The Pied Piper]”, in Time, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2013
    • They are also very sympathetic, especially Caesar's orangutan advisor, Maurice (Karin Konoval), who takes a shine to a human moppet (Amiah Miller) he finds hiding in the back of a shack, and the poignant Bad Ape (a scene-stealing Steve Zahn), a mangy chimp who was beaten so often in his zoo-animal...2017 July 7, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “The Ambitious War For The Planet Of The Apes Ends Up Surrendering to Formula”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 27 Nov 2017
    Synonyms:
    show-stealing

Synonyms of scene-stealing

Forms of scene-stealing

comparativemore scene-stealing
superlativemost scene-stealing

Questions about scene-stealing

What does scene-stealing mean?
Scene-stealing means that steals the scene (“dominates a performance through charisma, humour, or powerful acting”).
What part of speech is scene-stealing?
Scene-stealing is an adjective.
How do you pronounce scene-stealing?
Scene-stealing is pronounced /ˈsiːn ˈstiːlɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near scene-stealing in the dictionary

  1. scene-rooms
  2. scene-shifter
  3. scene-shifters
  4. scene-stealer
  5. scene-stealers
  6. scene-stealing
  7. scenecore
  8. scenecraft
  9. scened
  10. sceneful
  11. scenefuls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scene-stealing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-scene-stealing.ogg.

Cite this entry: “scene-stealing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scene-stealing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.