rapine

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French rapine, from Latin rapīna, from rapiō. Cf. also ravine.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹæpaɪn/

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rapine (countable and uncountable, plural rapines)

1. The seizure of someone's property by force; pillage, plunder.
   • 1848, Thomas Macaulay, “The History of England from the Accession Of James II”

     men who were impelled to war quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory

   • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart; Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, OCLC 20230794, page 01:

     The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.

   • 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), Part V: “The Merchant Princes”, Ch.10, pp.157–158:

     “You could join Wiscard’s remnants in the Red Stars. I don’t know, though, if you’d call that fighting or piracy. Or you could join our present gracious viceroy — gracious by right of murder, pillage, rapine, and the word of a boy Emperor, since rightfully assassinated.”

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000).

rapine (third-person singular simple present rapines, present participle rapining, simple past and past participle rapined)

1. To plunder.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir G. Buck, Hist. Richard III:

     A Tyrant doth not only rapine his Subjects, but spoils and robs Churches.

• Napier, arpine, panier

rapine f

1. plural of rapina

• aprine