Other forms: raids, raided, raiding
A raid is a sudden forced entry, in and out fast, with no warning given. Police through a front door at six in the morning. A bomber crew on a night raid, or four men in and out of a bank in ninety seconds.
It is a verb as well: police raided the warehouse, the Vikings raided the coast every summer. The domestic use is a joke on the violent one — raiding the fridge at midnight, raiding your savings to fix the roof. The compounds are everywhere: air raid, dawn raid, bank raid, and dawn raid again in the City, where it means buying a great block of shares the moment the market opens. Hold on to one thing: a raid is short. You raid a place and you leave, so an army that goes in and stays has not raided the country, it has invaded it.
1nounraidA sudden attack or forced entry by police, soldiers or criminals.
“The raid turned up two crates of stolen phones.”
2nounbombardmentAn attack from the air.
“The city took its worst raid on the second night.”
synonyms: bombardment
3verbstormTo enter a place suddenly in order to attack, search or steal.
“Officers raided three addresses before breakfast.”
4verbplunderTo take things from a place you were meant to leave alone.
“He raided the biscuit tin the moment she left the room.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
raid is a sudden attack.
Raid is Old English rād, 'a riding, an expedition on horseback, road' — the same word that also came down to us as road. The sense of a riding out faded from English, but the northern form survived in Scots, and Walter Scott hauled raid back into the language in the early nineteenth century. The police raid is a late arrival, from the end of that same century.
Old English
rād — a riding, an expedition on horseback, road
enm-nor
rade
Scots
raid
English, today
raid
From Scots raid, from enm-nor rade, from Old English rād (“a riding, an expedition on horseback, road”), whence also the inherited English a doublet of road. The earlier senses of “a riding, expedition, raid” fell into disuse in Early Modern English, but were revived in the northern form raid by Walter Scott in the early 19th century. The use for a swift police operation appears in the later 19th century and may perhaps have been influenced by French razzia (similar in both original meaning and sound).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA