hijack

UK/ˈhaɪ.d͡ʒæk/US/ˈhaɪ.d͡ʒæk/

verbB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,787 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: hijacking, hijacked, hijacks

To hijack is to seize control of a vehicle by force. Hijack a plane, a hijacked lorry, hijack the meeting.

The figurative sense is now at least as common: to hijack a meeting or a campaign is to take it over for your own purpose. Airline security since 2001 has been built almost entirely around making a hijack impossible rather than around anything else.

Definitions of hijack

1verbhijackTo seize control of a vehicle by force.B2+
“Armed men tried to hijack a lorry full of cigarettes on the motorway.”

hijack is a seizing.

Where it comes from

American, from about 1915, of uncertain origin, possibly from highway plus a slang word for a robber.

Possibly from a highway and jacker (1915).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

hijack in the wild

In most jurisdictions of the world, aircraft hijacking is punishable by life imprisonment or a long prison sentence.
Aircraft hijacking
Indian Airlines Flight 814, commonly known as IC 814, was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 that was hijacked on 24 December 1999 by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Indian Airlines Flight 814
The hijacking is a part of the millennium attack plots in late 1999 and early 2000 by al-Qaeda linked terrorists.
Indian Airlines Flight 814
After United States naval intervention, the ship arrived in Brazil, and the hijacking ended on 2 February when the rebels were given political asylum there.
Santa Maria hijacking
Aircraft hijacking incidents between the United States and Cuba were at their height between 1968 and 1972.
List of Cuba–United States aircraft hijackings

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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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