*342 OPINION

delivered the opinion of the Court,

A jury convicted appellant of aggravated assault by threat, stalking, and four separate instances of evading arrest, all stemming from his futile, month-long attempt to resurrect a short-lived affair with a married woman. On appeal, he argued that the evidence was insufficient to prove assault by threat because the State failed to prove that the assault victim knew that appellant had shot at her truck at the time that he acted. The court of appeals, finding the evidence legally insufficient, reversed and rendered a judgment of acquittal.1 The State argues first that the court of appeals erred in finding the evidence insufficient, and second that this Court should reconsider its decision in McGowan v. State, 664 S.W.2d 355 (Tex.Crim.App. 1984), which, according to the State, “requires a victim to perceive a threat at the time the offense occurred” to establish assault by threat.2 We conclude that McGowan held only that assault by threat requires the defendant to communicate a threat of imminent bodily injury; stabbing someone without first threatening him is a different assaultive offense.3 We hold that the evidence in the present case, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, is legally sufficient to support the assault-by-threat conviction. We therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case to that court for further proceedings.

I.

Appellant began stalking and harassing the complainant, Kim Tunnell, in November, 2001. Ms. Tunnell had been romantically involved with appellant, but, after deciding to attempt reconciliation with her husband, she ended the relationship. Appellant began calling Ms. Tunnell and leaving voice messages on her cell phone. While the messages were initially innocuous, they became increasingly violent and demanding.4 Ms. Tunnell began to fear *343for her safety, so, on November 27, 2001, she recorded the messages that appellant had left over a two-week period and took that recording to the police. She then went to her attorney to get a restraining order against appellant. When she arrived at her attorney’s office, she saw appellant in the parking lot, walking toward her truck. As she tried to back out of the parking lot to avoid him, he began hitting the passenger side window with a pistol. Ms. Tunnell sped off. After she was sure appellant was not following her, she returned to her attorney’s office, and her attorney called the police.

Just two weeks later, on December 12, 2001, Ms. Tunnell was driving to the laundromat when appellant drove up behind her. He then drove his car into the oncoming-traffic lane, and Ms. Tunnell noticed that the front passenger window was rolled half-way down. She recognized the car-it belonged to appellant’s mother-but she could not immediately tell who was driving it.5 She heard a “pop,” followed by another “pop,” and thought that appellant had possibly thrown rocks at her truck. She pulled into the parking lot at the laundromat and immediately got out of her truck to see what the popping noises had been. Appellant turned into a different entrance and drove past Ms. Tunnell; as she had suspected, it was appellant driving his mother’s car. After he left, she discovered a bullet hole in the rear driver’s side extended-cab portion of her truck, and she immediately called the police. Ms. Tunnell testified that seeing the bullet hole made her feel “shocked,” “upset,” and “scared.” She further testified that she “took [appellant’s actions] as intent to harm.” She “really didn’t know if he intended to kill [her] or what the deal was.” As the police conducted their investigation at the laundromat, appellant again called Ms. Tunnell on her cell phone. She gave the officers the number he was calling from. The police attempted to arrest appellant, but he led them on a chase and eventually escaped.

Appellant called Ms. Tunnell on several occasions following this incident. On two of those occasions, the police were able to find appellant, but both times he led the police on high-speed chases and was able to escape arrest.6 Finally, the police worked with Ms. Tunnell to set up a meeting between her and appellant so that they could arrest him. She agreed, and, on December 27, 2001, the police finally arrested appellant.

A jury convicted appellant and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He appealed, arguing that the State failed to prove the element of “threaten with imminent bodily injury.” He argued that, because Ms. Tunnell did not realize that he was shooting at her car while he was committing the act, she had not been “threatened” as required under Texas Penal Code Section 22.01(a)(2). The court of appeals *344found that Ms. Tunnell “did not perceive the threat at the time the offense occurred,” and thus, under this Court’s rule in McGowan, the State had not proven that Ms. Tunnell was threatened with imminent bodily injury.7

II.

Historically, the term assault was used to describe two different acts-one subject to criminal liability and the other subject to civil liability. Early criminal assault was defined as an “attempt to commit a battery.”8 Battery was the crime of physically hitting or injuring another.9 Thus, criminal assault was the (unsuccessful) attempt to physically hit or injure another. In civil tort law, assault was committed when an actor “with intent to cause a reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm, [did] some act which cause[d] such apprehension.”10 Civil assault was a verbal or physical threat made with the intent to place another in fear of physical injury and the threat does, in fact, place that person in fear. However, many states statutorily expanded the narrow common-law definition of criminal assault to include the tort-based definition of assault as well.11 Thus, “assault and battery” was both the successfully communicated threat to physically injure and the actual act of doing so-carrying through on that threat.12 The tort-based theory is the foundation for most assault-by-threat statutes now in existence. The Model Penal Code includes such a provision: “A person is guilty of assault if he ... attempts by physical menace to put another in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.”13

Nearly every jurisdiction now statutorily criminalizes assault by threat in some manner, and most statutes specify whether the threat must be perceived or received by the intended victim. For example, Colorado enacted a statute criminalizing menacing: “A person commits the crime of menacing if, by any threat or physical action, he or she knowingly places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.”14 This *345language indicates that, to commit assault, an actor need not succeed in placing a victim in fear or in causing a victim to be aware of the threat, his attempt to do so suffices.15 In contrast, Idaho defines assault by threat to explicitly require the victim’s perception: “An assault is ... [a]n intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.”16 Thus, some statutes require that the victim of an assault by threat (or menacing) perceive or receive the threat, while other statutes require only that the actor communicate the threat, regardless of whether the victim actually perceives or receives that threat.

Texas’s assault-by-threat statute states, in pertinent part: “A person commits an offense if the person ... intentionally or knowingly threatens another with imminent bodily injury[.]”17 Our statute does not explicitly indicate whether the intended victim must perceive or receive the threat. The question turns on the meaning of the term “threaten” as used in the Penal Code. Does it mean an act that must be perceived by the intended victim? Or must the actor only act with the intent that the victim perceive his threat?

When determining a statute’s meaning, a court must first attempt to interpret the statute based on the plain meaning of the words used.18 The word “threaten” is not statutorily defined in the Penal Code, so we turn to the common, ordinary meaning of that word. Webster’s Dictionary defines “threaten” in the following manners:

1. to declare an intention of hurting or punishing; to make threats against;

2. to be a menacing indication of (something dangerous, evil, etc.); as the clouds threaten rain or a storm;

3. to express intention to inflict (injury, retaliation, etc.);

4. to be a source of danger, harm, etc. to.19

Significantly, each of these definitions indicates an act being performed, as opposed to an act which is perceived by an outside party. Thus, these definitions indicate that a threat occurs, not when the victim perceives the threat, but as soon as the actor utters the threatening words or otherwise initiates the threatening conduct. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “threat” *346as: “A communicated intent to inflict harm or loss on another or on another’s property....”20 This could indicate either an act that is communicated by the actor to another, regardless of whether it is successfully perceived by the intended recipient, or one that is successfully communicated to the intended recipient. Thus, after analyzing the plain meaning of the statutory language, the Texas assault-by-threat statute remains ambiguous. We therefore must look outside this specific statute to discern the legislative meaning of the word “threaten.” 21

The Texas Penal Code contains two statutes, other than assault by threat, that specifically criminalize threats or threatening behavior. They are: terroristic threat22 and robbery by threat.23 The specific phrasing of these two statutes sheds some light on the meaning of the word “threaten” as it is used in the Texas Penal Code.

A person commits robbery by threat if “in the course of committing theft ... he ... intentionally or knowingly threatens or places another in fear of imminent bodily injury or death.”24 By defining robbery to be theft plus either threatening or placing another in fear, this statute demonstrates that the term “threaten” means something other than placing a person “in fear of imminent bodily injury or death.”

Similarly, the terroristic-threat statute states: “A person commits an offense if he threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.”25 Like robbery by threat, this statute indicates that “threaten” and “place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury” have two distinct meanings.26 Both statutes imply that one can threaten without necessarily placing another in fear of imminent bodily injury. A logical inference from this is that “threatening,” as used in the Penal Code, does not require that the intended victim perceive or receive the threat, but “placing another in fear of imminent bodily injury” does.

This interpretation of “threaten” is supported by at least one other jurisdiction. In the District of Columbia, the assault statute reads: ‘Whoever unlawfully assaults, or threatens another in a menacing manner, shall be fined_”27 This language has been interpreted as focusing not on whether the victim was placed in fear by the threat, but whether the accused intended to instill fear in the victim:

While certain conceptual aspects of tort theory have been absorbed into the criminal offense of assault, it is not necessarily the case that the victim must be shown factually to have experienced ap*347prehension or fear in order to establish the offense. In our view the better position holds that although the question whether the defendant’s conduct produced fear in the victim is relevant, the crucial inquiry remains whether the assailant acted in such a manner as would under the circumstances portend an immediate threat of danger to a person of reasonable sensibility.28

This intent-based theory of assault by threat also comports with the societal interest in establishing criminal law:

The purpose of criminal law is to define socially intolerable conduct, and to hold conduct within the limits which are reasonably acceptable from the social point of view. If the criminal law was one hundred percent effective there would be no punishment, because there would be no conduct which overstepped the

boundaries it had established. An incidental but very important function of the criminal law is to teach the difference between right and wrong.29

The act of threatening violates this interest not only when the actor actually causes fear in another, but also (1) when he creates an unacceptable risk that another may be placed in fear, and (2) when he increases the likelihood that he will carry through on a threat and cause a physical injury.

However, the court of appeals in the present case-as well as some other Texas courts-have interpreted this Court’s reasoning in McGowan v. State30 as holding that the Texas assault-by-threat and robbery-by-threat statutes require a victim to perceive a threat as it occurs-that is, the offense requires a successfully communicated threat.31 The court of appeals rea*348soned that, because Ms. Tunnell did not realize that appellant was shooting at her as he fired the shots, the evidence was legally insufficient under McGowan.32

McGowan is not that broad of a holding. That case involved a woman and her fourteen-year-old daughter who were attacked by the defendant.33 The evidence showed that the defendant stabbed the daughter with a knife. As he then stood over her, holding the knife, the girl asked him not to cut her. The mother, not seeing the knife held by the defendant, attempted to reach down and help her daughter. As she did, the defendant stabbed the mother in the back of the head; she did not know what she had been hit with.34 He then ran away. The mother testified that, while she knew she had been hit in the head and was bleeding, it was only after the tip of the knife was retrieved from her skull, that she realized she had been stabbed.35 This Court held that because there was no evidence presented that the defendant threatened the mother before stabbing her, the State failed to prove the element of “threat” to the mother.36 We affirmed the aggravated-assault-by-threat conviction against the daughter because “[t]he evidence showed that after she was initially stabbed by appellant [the daughter] saw him holding the knife and began begging appellant not to cut her. She further testified that appellant threatened her with imminent bodily injury.”37

A careful examination of the cases relied upon in McGowan, as well as the language used in the opinion itself, indicates that this Court did not define assault by threat as requiring a victim’s perception of the threat.38 While the McGowan court did *349refer to the mother’s lack of testimony regarding comprehension of a threat, it was the lack of any evidence, not the mother’s lack of perception of a threat, that led this Court to conclude that the State failed to prove assault by threat: “There is no evidence that prior to stabbing her appellant threatened her in any way.”39 That is, the defendant just stabbed her, he did not threaten her first.40 Thus, a more accurate description of the holding in McGowan is that there must be some evidence of a threat being made to sustain a conviction of assault by threat. McGowan did not address the question of whether, under the Texas Penal Code, assault by threat requires an intended victim to perceive the threat. That question remains open.

III.

However, we need not definitively resolve the question of whether an alleged victim must perceive the defendant’s threat to establish the crime of assault by threat in this case. Even assuming, ar-guendo, that the State must prove Ms. Tunnell perceived the threat, there is legally sufficient evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict. In concluding that Ms. Tunnell did not perceive a threat, the court of appeals failed to view all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. The record is replete with evidence that Ms. Tunnell felt threatened by appellant on several occasions leading up to the charged incident. While this evidence does not prove that Ms. Tunnell perceived a threat on the evening in question, it does support an inference that her state of mind on that evening was affected by appellant’s previous actions.41 If the determination of appellant’s guilt turns on whether Ms. Tunnell perceived a threat, her state of mind as the event occurred would be a critical factor for a jury to consider.42 The *350evidence regarding Ms. Tunnell’s state of mind leading up to the assault showed:

• «she felt “threatened and very uneasy” after hearing the messages that appellant left on her voice mail on November 26, 2001;

• «she felt “threatened ... as though he was going to do something” to her after hearing the message that appellant left on her voice mail on November 27, 2001;

• *she recorded the messages that appellant had left on her voice mail and turned them over to the police;

• «she went to her attorney’s office to obtain a restraining order against appellant;

• «she was “scared” and “concerned” by appellant’s actions of hitting her truck window with a pistol, and left her attorney’s parking lot out of fear for her safety; and

• «she began carrying a gun “for protection” against appellant.

Furthermore, ample evidence shows that Ms. Tunnell did perceive the threat made by appellant at the time the offense occurred. On the evening of the charged incident:

• «she saw a car that she knew belonged to appellant’s mother’s pull up behind her “at a very high rate of speed.” She suspected that appellant was driving the car;

• «she then saw the car pull up next to her, driving in the oncoming traffic lane;

• «she heard two pops that “sounded like rocks” hitting her truck;

• •after she arrived at her destination, she looked at the side of the car to see if appellant “had hit [her] truck with a rock or what it was”;

• «she discovered a bullet hole in the side of her truck, and immediately called the police;

• «she was “scared” and “in disbelief’ at appellant’s actions and she “really didn’t know if he intended to kill [her].”

This evidence indicates that Ms. Tunnell perceived a threat as appellant shot at her truck. While she did not instantaneously realize that appellant had fired shots at her, she knew that he had done something threatening to her. And she was frightened. The fact that Ms. Tunnell perceived some threat of imminent bodily injury, coupled with the fact that appellant did use a firearm in threatening her, is sufficient to sustain his conviction for aggravated assault as charged in the indictment. The indictment charged that appellant “did then and there intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly threaten Kim Tunnell with imminent bodily injury and did then and there use and exhibit a deadly weapon, to wit: a firearm.” Nothing in this indictment-and nothing in Texas law-requires Ms. Tunnell to accurately perceive the exact threat that appellant communicated. At most, the State was required only to prove that Ms. Tunnell perceived a threat and that appellant did, in fact, use or exhibit a firearm while making that threat.

Appellant also argues that the victim of an assault by threat must be aware “of her imminent peril as the shots were being fired.” The statute requires the State to prove that the defendant “threaten[ed] another with imminent bodily injury,” but there is no statutory requirement that a victim must instantaneously perceive or receive that threat of imminent bodily injury as the actor is performing *351it.43 Ms. Tunnell did not comprehend that she was being shot at as appellant fired at her car, but the realization-moments later 44-of what he had done nonetheless placed her in great fear.45

Because there is ample evidence to find that appellant threatened Ms. Tunnell as required under the Texas Penal Code, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case to that court to address appellant’s remaining points of error.

filed a concurring opinion in which KEASLER, and HERVEY, JJ., joined.

I agree with the Court’s conclusion that the assault statute does not require that the victim perceive the defendant’s conduct for that conduct to constitute a “threat.” The Court’s careful and thorough analysis is more than sufficient to support such a holding, and the conclusion is sufficient to dispose of this case. Having laid the groundwork for the conclusion, the Court gains nothing by stopping just short of making it a holding.

Nevertheless, I find some of the Court’s discussion on this question problematic. The issue before us is whether a victim must perceive conduct in order for that conduct to be a threat. A couple of issues not before us are whether the victim must be subjectively frightened for the act to be a threat, and whether (if fright is required) “threat” is judged subjectively or by a “reasonable person” standard. Some of the examples the Court uses and cases to which the Court cites are pertinent only to the latter questions.

I also do not find the Fatal Attraction example and the threatening-note example to be helpful. In both of those cases, there is a threat to harm the victim by an act in the future. In the present case, there was no threat to act in the future-the threat and the conduct were one and the same.

*352Given the many aspects of the “threat” issue, perhaps it would be better simply to hold, as the Court almost does, that a threat need not be perceived in order to be a threat.