rob Peter to pay Paul
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To take money from one source to pay another debt
Literally: to steal from one to pay another
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
rob Peter to pay Paul as usual
‘ These ratings should be a shining beacon to the Government to support research and cease their rob Peter to pay Paul policies,’ said an Association of University Teachers ' spokesman.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “rob Peter to pay Paul” mean?
To take money from one source to pay another debt Literally: to steal from one to pay another
Is “rob Peter to pay Paul” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.