Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Forcible seizure of another's property; plunder.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To plunder violently or by superior force.
- noun The violent seizure and carrying off of property; open plunder by armed or superior force, as in war or by invasion or raid.
- noun Violence; force; ravishment.
- noun Synonyms Plunder, spoliation, robbery, depredation. See
pillage .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of things by force; spoliation; pillage; plunder.
- noun obsolete Ravishment; rape.
- transitive verb To plunder.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
seizure of someone's property by force;plunder . - verb To
plunder .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the act of despoiling a country in warfare
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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The number of prisoners or criminals would be inadequate to the annual demand; but the common people are in a state of servitude to their lords; the exercise of fraud or rapine is unpunished in a lawless community; and the market is continually replenished by the abuse of civil and paternal authority.
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The king, while fully acknowledging Clive's services, thought him guilty of "rapine," and disapproved of his virtual acquittal.
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Eginhard's indignation at the "rapine" of this "nequissimus nebulo" is exquisitely droll.
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Eginhard's indignation at the "rapine" of this "nequissimus nebulo" is exquisitely droll.
Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
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They come with the guilt of fresh sins warm upon their consciences, lifting up those hands in prayer that were lately busied in all kind of rapine and violence, and joining in it with those tongues that were not long before the instruments of railing, filth, and obscenity.
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Thomas Asbridge opens his book The First Crusade (2004) with this quote from Pope Urban II: A race absolutely alien to God has invaded the land of Christians, has reduced the people with sword, rapine and flame.
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It's a one-book explanation for the current move to the left in a growing number of Latin American countries, tracing a centuries-long history of rapine and plunder, of genocide and dictatorship, first at the hands of Spain, and more recently under the baleful influence of the US, which operated directly or by proxy to ensure that nothing would ever change.
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* One of ancient Rome's richest men, I discovered googling, was Marcus Linius Crassus, who achieved his wealth through 'fire and rapine.'
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His was the lean ship, and his the seven other lean ships that had made the foray, fled the rapine, and won through the storm.
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* One of ancient Rome's richest men, I discovered googling, was Marcus Linius Crassus, who achieved his wealth through 'fire and rapine.'
brtom commented on the word rapine
... and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Joyce, Ulysses, 2
December 29, 2006
100000232338334 commented on the word rapine
"'And what happened to you?' I asked politely, meaning how did he come to depart his wonderful warm-blooded life of rapine and slaughter for the vampire edition of the same thing."-Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris
May 19, 2011
dailyword commented on the word rapine
Adso used this word in "The Name Of The Rose."
June 10, 2012