Word.ws English Dictionary

stolen valor

stolen valor noun: an instance of a person falsely claiming to have served in the military, or of a member of the military falsely claiming to have served in ways they did not.

Noun

stolen valor (uncountable)

  1. (US) An instance of a person falsely claiming to have served in the military, or of a member of the military falsely claiming to have served in ways they did not.
  2. (US) An instance of stolen valor in which the perpetrator has the intention to receive money, donations, discounts, or other benefits.
  3. (US) The respect or benefits so gained.
  4. (US, figuratively) Any instance of falsely claiming to be a part of a respected group to gain that respect.
    • For the most part there are clothes and canvas totes and Palm Springs–esque items that better suit any old bland Trumpfluencer than the blue-collar, stolen-valor look of most Trump merch.2020 December 15, Kenzie Bryant, “Kimberly Guilfoyle Pivots to Trumpfluencing”, in Vanity Fair, archived from the original on 15 Dec 2020

Origin of stolen valor

Coined by American writer B. G. Burkett in 1998.

Questions about stolen valor

What does stolen valor mean?
Stolen valor means an instance of a person falsely claiming to have served in the military, or of a member of the military falsely claiming to have served in ways they did not.
What part of speech is stolen valor?
Stolen valor is a noun.

Words near stolen valor in the dictionary

  1. stolen shot
  2. stolen someone's identity
  3. stolen someone's thunder
  4. stolen the scene
  5. stolen the show
  6. stolen valor
  7. stolenness
  8. stolens
  9. stoles
  10. stolest
  11. Stolford

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stolen valor (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.

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