confiscate
/ˈkɑnfəˌskeɪt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.93 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "In schools, it is common for teachers to confiscate electronic games and other distractions."
- "We doe confiscate (Towards the satisfying of your accounts) All that you haue."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin cōnfiscātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin cōnfiscō (“to seize for the public treasury (fiscus)”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: cōnfiscō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkɑnfəˌskeɪt/
- British English: /ˈkɒnfɪskeɪt/