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pillage

UK/ˈpɪl.ɪd͡ʒ/US/ˈpɪl.ɪd͡ʒ/
verbC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,986 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: pillaged, pillaging, pillages

To pillage is to rob and destroy a town after taking it. Pillage the city, sack and pillage, pillaged for centuries.

It was for most of history the accepted reward for soldiers who took a place by storm, which is why sieges so often ended in horror. It is now a war crime. The word is also used of taking cultural treasures, as in museums that pillaged their collections.

George Cruikshank · Public domain

Definitions of pillage

  1. 1verbpillageTo rob and destroy a town after taking it.C1

    “The invading army pillaged the town and burned the church.”

pillage is a plundering.

Where it comes from

Old French pillage comes from piller, to plunder, of uncertain Latin origin.

  1. Latin

    piliō

  2. Old French

    pillage

  3. English, today

    pillage

Built from

  • piller · Old French — plunder
  • pilus · Latin — hair

From Old French pillage, from piller (“plunder”), from an unattested meaning of Latin piliō, probably a figurative use of Latin pilō (“to remove (hair)”), from pilus (“hair”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in History & Eras

Practise this word

pillage in the wild

  • The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, or pillage.

    Looting

  • The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 explicitly prohibited pillage and looting, codifying earlier efforts to restrain the practice in European warfare.

    Looting

  • Josephus' account is the only known record of the pillage and its perpetrators.

    Pillage of Ein Gedi

  • The Vlatades Monastery was spared from pillage during the siege of Thessalonica, as its monks cooperated with the Ottoman troops during the battle for the city.

    Vlatades Monastery

  • The pillage is most commonly attributed to Estonians, Curonians, Karelians, or Novgorodians.

    Pillage of Sigtuna

1 / 2

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.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the pilus family

peel

pillage — used about once every 5,406 pages · #9,986 · point at the bar for the others