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17 days ago…petit theft…
Twice, even.
And then at the end,
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
I call horseshit on that last sentence.
Welp, TIL. Thank you. :)
While absolutely conceding the synonymous property of the two phrases, I will further confess to never having encountered the francified version, which seems unfair since they had it first.
As a reference source I bristle at Merriam-Webster’s citing only four recent examples from current year (2026) and one more from only a year earlier. That’s utterly – nay, actively – useless to establish provenance or actual etymological information. But that’s on par for M-W. Etymonline’s result for “petty” was more useful.
A DDG search on ‘“petit theft” provenance’ results was more fruitful, and maybe where your own AFAICT info came from(?):
I’ll chalk-up the difference to mutual provinciality and the Atlantic USAian coast’s complicated history with the French. ;-)