Difference between to steal, to rob, to mug and to burgle

Hi! So another issue students have in our Skype Englishclasses is that associated with the verbs 'to rob', 'to steal' 'to burgle' and 'to mug'. Much confusion arises with these. 

'To mug' is reasonably easy. It is when someone pickpockets you outside. We are talking about stealing phones, wallets, iPods and the like: small items that you carry on your person. A mugger does this.
 

 'To burgle' is easy too. It's when things from your house are stolen by a thief. A burglar carries this out. 

 

Concerning 'to rob'.You rob buildings, companies or organisations or people. It is transitive. For example, 'she robbed the bank', 'they robbed the family', 'I was robbed' or 'they robbed el Corte Inglés'. Here, the object is the person or thing that suffers, not what the thrift takes. The noun is 'a robbery'. 
 

With 'to steal' this is equally transitive but here the object is what is stolen: money, data, a wallet, a phone etc. With 'to steal' when you indicate the innocent party or where the item was taken from, you need the preposition 'from'. For instance, 'she stole the cash from the till', 'I have stolen money from the bank twice' or 'the thief stole the handbag from the frail woman'. We don't usually use a noun with 'to steal'.

 Hope that helps. Have a Nice day. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com