embezzle: [15] Originally, embezzle meant simply ‘steal’: ‘See that no victuals nor no other stuff of the same household be embezzled out’, Household Ordinances 1469. The modern legal sense ‘convert fraudulently’ did not develop until the late 16th century. The word itself comes from Anglo-Norman enbesiler, a compound formed from the intensive prefix en- and the Old French verb besiller, of unknown origin.
