loot
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /luːt/
ipa: /ɫʉːt/
rhymes: -uːt
homophone: lute (yod-dropping)
Etymology: Borrowed from Hindi लूट (lūṭ, “booty”), either from Sanskrit लोप्त्र (loptra, “booty, stolen property”) or लुण्ट् (luṇṭ, “to rob, plunder”). The figurative meaning developed in American English in the 1920s, resulting in a generalized meaning by the 1950s.
Senses: examples: text: Loot, plunder, pillage.
ref: 1788, Indian Vocabulary, page 77:
text: He always found the talismanic gathering-word Loot (plunder), a sufficient bond of union in any part of India.
ref: 1839, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, number 45, page 104:
text: Why, the race [of camp followers] is suckled on loot, fed on theft, swaddled in plunder, and weaned on robbery.
ref: 1860, William Howard Russell, My Diary in India in the Year 1858–9, volume II, page 340:
text: The horses in the archbishop's stables the murderers appropriated as their own fee,—or, as we should now say, as loot.
ref: 1862, Walter F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, volume II, page 505:
text: But yet, with the persistent avariciousness of the white man, the Arabs clung to their loot, and when morning came forced the demoralized Manyuema to take up their burdens of death and stagger on into the jungle.
ref: 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 146:
text: India went from being a world-famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer, went from having 27% of world trade to less than 2%. Meanwhile, colonialists like Sir Robert Clive bought their rotten boroughs in England on the proceeds of their loot in India while taking the Hindi word "loot" into their dictionaries as well as their habits.
ref: 2015, Shashi Tharoor, "Britain Does Owe Reparations", 00:02:22
text: The loot from the sack of Constantinople included the head of John the Baptist.
glosses: Synonym of booty, goods seized from an enemy by violence, particularly (historical) during the sacking of a town in war or (video games) after successful combat.
synonyms: word: booty
extra: (historical) during the sacking of a town in war or (video games) after successful combat
word: goods seized from an enemy by violence
extra: (historical) during the sacking of a town in war or (video games) after successful combat
word: particularly
extra: (historical) during the sacking of a town in war or (video games) after successful combat
examples: text: He consented to the loot of the city by the men under his command.
glosses: Synonym of sack, the plundering of a city, particularly during war.
synonyms: word: sack
extra: the plundering of a city, particularly during war
examples: text: Free Loot for Children
ref: 1956 April 23, Life Magazine, p. 131
glosses: Any valuable thing received for free, especially Christmas presents.
examples: text: I got my mink the hard way. I paid for it. It cost a lot of loot and it took a little while to do it, but it's all mine.
ref: 1951 November, Thelma Carpenter, quotee, “10 ways to get a mink coat”, in Jet, Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, page 46:
text: There was nothing to do except for Mom to go back slaving away as somebody's maid. In Baltimore she couldn't make half the loot she could up North.
ref: 1956, Billie Holiday et al., Lady Sings the Blues, page 26:
text: How about all of those guys, dolls, dancers, fancy orchestration, and special lyrics? Didn't all of that cost a lot of loot? A good question. Would you believe me if I told you that we bought all of that talent for less than $10,000?
ref: 1963, Advertising & Sales Promotion, volume 11, Crain Communications:
text: Movies and TV were […] continuing to pretend for many years that the contents of a single briefcase could purchase a small country. Lately, though, filmmakers have made some sincere efforts to be realistic about the sheer bulk of pilfered loot)
ref: 2019 July 3, Mike D'Angelo, “Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck Blunder through a Heavy Heist in J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier”, in AV Club, archived from the original on 21 Nov 2019:
glosses: Synonym of money.
synonyms: word: money
Derived terms: lootbox
loot box
loot crate
lootocracy
loot rail
loot whore
ninja loot