plunder
Noun
- goods or money obtained illegally
- An instance of plundering.
- The loot attained by plundering.
- Baggage; luggage.
- The crime of amassing ill-gotten wealth by public officials through a combination or series of overt criminal acts.
Verb
Verb Forms: plundered, plundering, plunders
- To rob of goods by force, especially during war.
- take illegally; of intellectual property
- "This writer plundered from famous authors"
- plunder (a town) after capture
- steal goods; take as spoils
- destroy and strip of its possession
- To pillage, take or destroy all the goods of, by force (as in war); to raid, sack.
- To take (goods) by pillage.
- To take by force or wrongfully; to commit robbery or looting, to raid.
- To make extensive (over)use of, as if by plundering; to use or use up wrongfully.
- To take unexpectedly.
Examples
- He aimed to PLUNDER the triple word score, leaving nothing for his opponent.
- The Hessian kept his choicest plunder in a sack that never left his person, for fear that his comrades would steal it.
- The mercenaries plundered all the goods they found.
- The mercenaries plundered the small town.
- The miners plundered the jungle for its diamonds till it became a muddy waste.
- The shopkeeper was plundered of his possessions by the burglar.
- “Now to plunder, mateys!” screamed a buccaneer, to cries of “Arrgh!” and “Aye!” all around.
Origin / Etymology
Recorded since 1632 during the Thirty Years War, native British use since the Cromwellian Civil War. Borrowed from German plündern (“to loot”), from Middle High German, from Middle Low German plunderen, from a noun originally meaning "household goods, bedding, clothing," of obscure ultimate origin. This is first attested in medieval records, and according to Gijsseling, is therefore attested too late to be considered a substrate word. Due to the lack of obvious cognates in other languages from which it would have been loaned, it could have developed as some slang word in Lower Saxony/the Low Countries.
Cognate with Dutch plunderen, West Frisian plonderje, Saterland Frisian plunnerje. Probably denominal from a word for “household goods, clothes, bedding”; compare Middle Dutch plunder, German Plunder (“stuff”), Dutch and West Frisian plunje (“clothes”).
Synonyms
booty, despoil, dirty money, foray, loot, pillage, prize, ransack, rape, reave, rifle, sack, spoil, strip, swag, violate, boodle, fang, gizzit, haul, hot property, pelf, pickings, plunder, prigging, spoils
Scrabble Score: 10
plunder: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordplunder: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
plunder: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary