What does asportation mean?
Asportation is a formal noun denoting the act of carrying or conveying something away from a place. Its principal modern home is law, particularly criminal law: for a theft to qualify as larceny, the perpetrator must not merely take possession of property but must physically remove it — even a few inches can suffice — and this movement is called asportation. The word thus captures the precise moment when taking becomes stealing. Outside legal usage, asportation appears only rarely, lending any sentence a distinctly technical, scholarly flavor; ordinary writers would reach instead for 'removal' or 'carrying away'. Derived from Latin roots meaning 'to carry off', it belongs to the same family as transport and portable. Though uncommon, it is a useful term for anyone studying the mechanics of theft, the history of English law, or the precision with which legal language carves up everyday actions.
nounThe action of carrying or transporting something away from a particular place; in law, the removal of goods or property by a thief from the scene of the taking, an essential element of larceny.
- Law: the act of carrying away stolen goods or property from the place of taking, a required element of larceny.
- General/rare: the action of transporting or carrying something away from a place.
"Under common law, larceny requires not only the taking of goods but also their asportation — their actual carrying away."
"The court emphasized that mere touching of the property was insufficient; larceny required its actual asportation."
"Even moving the stolen bicycle a few feet constituted asportation and completed the crime."
Rarely pluralized, since asportation typically describes a single element of a single crime; the plural appears mainly in legal texts discussing multiple acts.
"The report catalogued several distinct asportations committed during the burglary."
In law, a thief who pockets your wallet but never takes it out of the room may technically have failed to commit larceny — because without 'asportation', there's no theft.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of asportation
Asportation derives from the Latin verb asportare, formed from ad- ('toward, away') plus portare ('to carry'), literally meaning 'to carry away'. It entered English in the early seventeenth century through legal Latin, which is why its strongest associations remain with jurisprudence rather than everyday speech. It shares the Latin root portare with such words as transport, export, import, and portable, all of which preserve the underlying idea of carrying.
Related word forms
How asportation is actually used
Asportation is a formal legal term, encountered chiefly in discussions of criminal law and larceny. Outside legal contexts it is rare and somewhat archaic-sounding; general writing would normally use 'removal' or 'carrying away'.
Easily confused with asportation
Exportation refers to sending goods out of a country for trade, whereas asportation is a broader legal term for carrying anything away from where it was taken, most often in the context of theft.