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Does “roubar” mean to cheat in Portuguese?

Roubar is “to steal,” but put Brazilian children in front of a game and it becomes the word for cheating. Você tá roubando! means “you’re cheating,” and eu não roubei, não is the standard denial. Football crowds use it the same way about a referee — o juiz roubou o nosso time. English keeps stealing and cheating apart; Portuguese lets one verb cover both.

The formal option, trapacear, exists in both varieties but sounds bookish coming from a child. Portugal reaches for fazer batota instead, which is the phrase you want if you are accusing anyone of anything over a card table in Lisbon. School has its own specific verb: colar, to copy off a classmate in a test, from cola, the cheat sheet. And roubar keeps a gentle sense too — roubou meu coração works exactly like “stole my heart.”