Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To seize (private property) for the public treasury, especially as a penalty for wrongdoing.
  • transitive verb To seize by authority: synonym: appropriate.
  • adjective Seized by a government; appropriated.
  • adjective Having lost property through confiscation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To adjudge to be forfeited to the public treasury, as the goods or estate of a traitor or other criminal, by way of penalty; appropriate, by way of penalty, to public use.
  • To take away from another by or as if by authority; appropriate summarily, as anything improperly held or obtained by another; seize as forfeited for any reason: as, to confiscate a book; the police confiscated a set of gambling implements.
  • Forfeited and adjudged to the public treasury, as the goods of a criminal.
  • Appropriated under legal authority as forfeited.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To seize as forfeited to the public treasury; to appropriate to the public use.
  • adjective Seized and appropriated by the government to the public use; forfeited.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To use one's authority to lay claim to and separate a possession from its holder.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb take temporary possession of as a security, by legal authority
  • adjective surrendered as a penalty

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin cōnfiscāre, cōnfiscāt : com-, com- + fiscus, treasury.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin confiscare ("to declare property of the fisc").

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Examples

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  • "Macroeconomics book"-

    September 22, 2010