Word.ws English Dictionary

theef

theef is the obsolete spelling of thief.

Meaning of thief

Noun

thief (plural thieves)

  1. One who carries out a theft.
    • water-thieves and land-thievesc. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. One who steals another person's property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.
    • Take heed to false harlots, and more, ye wot what. / If noise ye heare, / Looke all be cleare: / Least drabs doe noie thee, / And theeues destroie thee.1878, Thomas Tusser, “74. A Digression.”, in Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. […], London: Published for the English Dialect Society by Trübner & Co., […], →OCLC; republished as W[illiam]...
  3. (obsolete) A waster in the snuff of a candle.
    • But hear you, my Worthy Brethren: do not you, where you see a thief in the candle, call presently for an extinguisher[…]1640, Joseph Hall, Divine Light

Forms of theef

pluraltheeves
pluraltheefs

Questions about theef

What is theef the obsolete spelling of?
Theef is the obsolete spelling of thief.

Words near theef in the dictionary

  1. thee and me
  2. thee sen
  3. theed
  4. Theedom
  5. Theedoms
  6. theef
  7. theefs
  8. theeing
  9. theek
  10. theeked
  11. theeker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: theef (page history and authors); thief (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: “theef.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/theef. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.