confiscate

UK/ˈkɒnfɪskeɪt/US/ˈkɑnfəˌskeɪt/

verbB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,360 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: confiscated, confiscating, confiscates

To confiscate is to take property away by authority. Confiscate the phone, goods confiscated, confiscated at the border.

The authority is what makes it confiscation rather than theft, and the range runs from a teacher taking a phone to a state seizing an estate. The Latin means to take into the public treasury, which is where the money was supposed to go.

Definitions of confiscate

1verbconfiscateTo take property away by authority.B2+
“The teacher confiscated his phone until the end of the lesson.”

confiscate is a taking.

Where it comes from

Latin confiscare means to take into the treasury — con plus fiscus, the public purse. Fiscal is a relative.

Latin
cōnfiscātus
English, today
confiscate

Latin cōnfiscātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin cōnfiscō (“to seize for the public treasury (fiscus)”), see -ate and -ate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

confiscate in the wild

The same acts guaranteed that he would not confiscate any szlachta property without a court verdict.
Neminem captivabimus
After the fall of the Uprising he refused to execute the order of the Czar to confiscate the estates and property of participants in the uprising.
Rajmund Rembieliński
In practice, members of the DSK confiscated whatever they thought may be of worth.
Devisenschutzkommando
As the defeat of the German army by Allied forces became evident, actions taken by the DSK to confiscate anything of value to the Nazi state became brutal.
Devisenschutzkommando
The confiscated assets are allegedly used to compensate pro-independence activists and their offspring.
Special Law to Redeem Pro-Japanese Collaborators' Property

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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