Confiscate

/ˈkɒnfɪskeɪt/ · verb

Meaning

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

Definitions by Sense

1. (transitive) To use one's authority to lay claim to and separate a possession from its holder.
2. (obsolete) Confiscated; seized and appropriated by the government for public use; forfeit.

Example Sentences

In schools, it is common for teachers to confiscate electronic games and other distractions.

1768, Alexander Dow (translator), The History of Hindostan by Muḥammad Qāsim Hindū Shāh Astarābādī, London: T. Becket & P.A. de Hondt, Volume 2, Section 4, p. 63, The Persian having evacuated the imperial provinces, the vizier became more cruel and oppressive than ever: he extorted money from the poor by tortures, and confiscated the estates of the nobility, upon false or very frivolous pretences.

We doe confiscate (Towards the satisfying of your accounts) All that you haue.

Why, your cavalier is a rebel—an exile, whose property is confiscated, and for whose neck the gibbet stands prepared!

Whenever you strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, you know—you find a custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it’s their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’t pay the duty they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don’t deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all it is.

They took photographs of the bodies, but these were confiscated on return to Baghdad, and orders were given that nothing was to be said of what they had seen.

But his grandson Francis, a Yorkist friend of Richard III, backed the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses and was declared a traitor by Henry VII, who confiscated his estates.

Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum, / Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate.

Synonyms for confiscate

Antonyms for confiscate

Related Words

Word Forms

• confiscates
• confiscating
• confiscated
• confuscate

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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