Legally seize (property), 8 letters - Crossword clues, answers, solver

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Answer for the clue "Legally seize (property) ", 8 letters:
distrain

Word definitions for distrain in dictionaries

The Collaborative International Dictionary Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Distrain \Dis*train"\, v. i. To levy a distress. Upon whom I can distrain for debt. --Camden.

WordNet Word definitions in WordNet
v. levy a distress on confiscate by distress legally take something in place of a debt payment

Wiktionary Word definitions in Wiktionary
vb. 1 (label en obsolete) To squeeze, press, embrace; to constrain, oppress. 2 (label en legal transitive obsolete) To force (someone) to do something by seizing their property. 3 (label en legal intransitive) To seize somebody's property in place of, or ...

Usage examples of distrain.

No one shall be distrained for performance of greater service for a knight’s fee, or for any other free tenement, than is due therefrom.

Effulgent on funereal piled Across the vacant heavens, and distrained Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear.

Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about tenants and farming—much more than I could understand.

For this man fronting her was more than she had thought him, and suddenly it seemed that giving him up was almost as generous a gesture as this gesture of his, turning her loose to her happiness with another man and another cause, only distraining the small matter of gold for his pains.

I never came to the point of distraining on a tenant or flogging a villein but I heard him outarguing me, and drew in my hand.

First of all, he pronounced the property of Tiberius Gracchus to be forfeited to the gods because in fining and distraining upon a man who had appealed to a tribune, he had not yielded to his veto and had impugned his authority.