pillage - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Old French pillage, from piller (“plunder”), from an unattested meaning of Late Latin piliō, probably a figurative use of Latin pilō (“to remove (hair)”), from pilus (“hair”).

pillage (third-person singular simple present pillages, present participle pillaging, simple past and past participle pillaged)

  1. (ambitransitive) To loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.
    • 1911, Sabine Baring-Gould, Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe, Chapter VI: Cliff Castles—Continued,
      Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies [France], but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county.
    • 1927, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados Mysteries:
      So far as Pridger was concerned the game was up. He had cooked the buying, he had cooked the selling, he had systematically pillaged the stock.

pillage (countable and uncountable, plural pillages)

  1. The spoils of war.
  2. The act of pillaging.
    • 2013, Zoë Marriage, Formal Peace and Informal War: Security and Development in Congo:
      An employee at a brewery in Kinshasa rated the aftermath as more catastrophic to the company than the direct violence: It was more the consequences of the pillages that hit Bracongo – the poverty of the people, our friends who buy beer.

the spoils of war

the act of pillaging

From piller +‎ -age.

pillage m (plural pillages)

  1. pillage
    Near-synonym: déprédation

From Old French pillage.

pillage m (plural pillages)

  1. (Jersey) looting

pillage oblique singular, m (oblique plural pillages, nominative singular pillages, nominative plural **pillage)

  1. pillaging