Reave

Quick meaning: Reave is a verb meaning (archaic) To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.

Meaning

(archaic) To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.

More Meanings

1. (archaic) To deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence.
2. (archaic) To split, tear, break apart.

Example Sentences

And I for one am not convinced of the innocence of the model: it is as if we let a criminal make up the law as he or she ambles along, reaving right and left.

Few of the chroniclers of Nero’s reign have been accurate when relating the situation that obtained between the Emperor and his mother from the time when, reft of her German and Pannonian guards, she lived in a more or less solitary rage on one estate or another.

There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, […]

Word Forms

• reaves
• reaving
• reaved

Synonyms for reave

Depending on context, synonyms include foray, plunder, loot, strip, ransack, pillage.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include despoil, plunder, pillage, ransack, foray, rifle.

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