It's still a wrong if you steal your friend's chocolate, even if they don't have you prosecuted. But if I follow the song and surprise naath with a kiss at the turn of a mile then I've not done anything wrong (supposing for the sake that the circumstances don't cause it to be driving without due care and attention).
It hardly qualifies as stealing in any sense but the poetic, though, in that situation. In terms of the Theft Act 1968 (under whose purview it does not of course fall but supposing for the sake of argument etc), it fails on the dishonesty criterion, specifically 2.-(1)(b): you reasonably believe that you would have naath's consent if she knew about it (in advance).
Also, not everybody is in a position to be able to "steal" a kiss by this definition without wronging somebody.
Does anyone ever talk about ‘stealing’ kisses in a non-poetic sense? (Certainly that's the sense I had in mind, I even started throwing in lyrics when it began to look like you might not have realized that.)
I think the last time I can immediately remember seeing the phrase used, it wasn't in quite that poetic a sense, in that it was describing something which, if not actual sexual assault, was at least borderline non-consensual: the kisser was not operating in full confidence of the kissee's retrospective consent, and the kissee was not entirely happy about the act but was merely not quite annoyed enough to make a fuss. That's certainly the sense in which I would normally have expected to see it used.
Also, you originally used the phrase in response to Owen's implicit assertion that chocolate was easier to acquire. In the light of it turning out that you in fact meant one could steal kisses provided one had someone to steal them from who would probably have been willing to give them for free in any case, this suddenly sounds less like an attempt to persuade him of an error in his reasoning and more like being vocally smug that your own reasoning starts from different premises!
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-16 03:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-16 03:56 pm (UTC)Also, not everybody is in a position to be able to "steal" a kiss by this definition without wronging somebody.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-16 04:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-16 04:26 pm (UTC)Also, you originally used the phrase in response to Owen's implicit assertion that chocolate was easier to acquire. In the light of it turning out that you in fact meant one could steal kisses provided one had someone to steal them from who would probably have been willing to give them for free in any case, this suddenly sounds less like an attempt to persuade him of an error in his reasoning and more like being vocally smug that your own reasoning starts from different premises!