rapine
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɹæpaɪn/
Forms: form: rapines
Etymology: From Middle English rapyne, from Old French rapine, from Latin rapīna, from rapiō. Doublet of rape and ravine.
Senses: examples: text: This countrey ſwarmes with vile outragious men,
That liue by rapine and by lawleſſe ſpoile,
Fit ſouldiers for the wicked Tamburlaine.
ref: c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene ii:
text: Good Rapine, stab him: he is a ravisher.
ref: c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
text: Justice and truth are the common ties of society; and therefore, even out-laws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity amongst themselves, or else they cannot hold together. But will any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine, have innate principles of truth and justice which they allow and assent to?
ref: 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter III, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:
text: And it was peculiar in their Temper, that they were fonder of what they could get by Rapine or Stealth at a greater diſtance, than much better Food provided for them at home.
ref: 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author’s Great Love of His Native Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 262:
text: men who were impelled to war quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory
ref: 1848, Thomas Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession Of James II:
text: The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.
ref: 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
text: You could join Wiscard’s remnants in the Red Stars. I don’t know, though, if you’d call that fighting or piracy. Or you could join our present gracious viceroy — gracious by right of murder, pillage, rapine, and the word of a boy Emperor, since rightfully assassinated.
ref: 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), Part V: “The Merchant Princes”, Ch.10, pp.157–158
text: An order asserted itself, and the hoods on the furnaces were oped wide, and a final march was organized. The wails of the injured and the roars of the dead-on-the-march overwhelmed the tinny speakers in the cell, and they all watched as nearly one thousand people reduced themselves to a few frantic hundred in less than an hour, then settled into a sustained orgy of battery, rapine and rape with no end in sight but the total depopulation of the entire facility.
ref: 2024 September 28, Harry Blank, “Not Ready for Prime Time”, in Deadlined, →ISBN, page 604:
glosses: The seizure of someone's property by force; pillage; plunder.