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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
pillage
verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A horde of Goblins under Grom the Paunch pillaged eastern Ulthuan.
▪ In 1498, Vasco da Gama pursued and pillaged them.
▪ It might have been better had they looted, pillaged, raped, and left.
▪ Its aim is no longer to pillage the wild for man's use, but to protect what remains against domestication.
▪ Reims suffered four sieges in sixty years, Épernay was pillaged half a dozen times and burnt twice.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pillage

Pillage \Pil"lage\, n. [F., fr. piller to plunder. See Pill to plunder.]

  1. The act of pillaging; robbery.
    --Shak.

  2. That which is taken from another or others by open force, particularly and chiefly from enemies in war; plunder; spoil; booty.

    Which pillage they with merry march bring home.
    --Shak.

    Syn: Plunder; rapine; spoil; depredation.

    Usage: Pillage, Plunder. Pillage refers particularly to the act of stripping the sufferers of their goods, while plunder refers to the removal of the things thus taken; but the words are freely interchanged.

Pillage

Pillage \Pil"lage\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Pillaged; p. pr. & vb. n. Pillaging.] To strip of money or goods by open violence; to plunder; to spoil; to lay waste; as, to pillage the camp of an enemy.

Mummius . . . took, pillaged, and burnt their city.
--Arbuthnot.

Pillage

Pillage \Pil"lage\, v. i. To take spoil; to plunder; to ravage.

They were suffered to pillage wherever they went.
--Macaulay.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pillage

late 14c., "act of plundering" (especially in war), from Old French pilage (14c.) "plunder," from pillier "to plunder, loot, ill-treat," possibly from Vulgar Latin *piliare "to plunder," probably from a figurative use of Latin pilare "to strip of hair," perhaps also meaning "to skin" (compare figurative extension of verbs pluck, fleece), from pilus "a hair" (see pile (n.3)).

pillage

"plunder, despoil," 1590s, from pillage (n.). Related: Pillaged; pillaging. The earlier verb in English was simply pill (late Old English), which probably is from Latin pilare.

Wiktionary
pillage

n. 1 The spoils of war. 2 The act of pillaging. vb. (context ambitransitive English) To loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.

WordNet
pillage
  1. n. goods or money obtained illegally [syn: loot, booty, plunder, prize, swag, dirty money]

  2. the act of stealing valuable things from a place; "the plundering of the Parthenon"; "his plundering of the great authors" [syn: plundering, pillaging]

pillage

v. steal goods; take as spoils; "During the earthquake people looted the stores that were deserted by their owners" [syn: plunder, despoil, loot, reave, strip, rifle, ransack, foray]

Usage examples of "pillage".

Treves, which in the space of forty years had been four times besieged and pillaged, was disposed to lose the memory of her afflictions in the vain amusements of the Circus.

Erembalds, who next attacked the Loove, and, having pillaged it, rushed over Bruges, slaughtering without mercy all who dared to oppose them.

While the skirmishes went on, Emich was pillaging on the other side of the Danube.

His politic head has learned by this time that there is more to be gotten by oppressing his feudatories, and pillaging his allies, than fighting with the Turks for the Holy Sepulchre.

The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians.

Like the Hilo Club and the Club Torreo, four gambling places had been pillaged by a cloaked intruder whom the underworld declared must be The Shadow.

Although the town afforded much pillage, the loss of so many troops so mixed the sour with the sweet that General Moyses could only allay his grief by sacking three other towns, Veratis, Solmos, and Kapronka.

But his wanderlust drove him again across the sea, to a mudwalled trading village on the coast of Asia, called Troy, whence he drifted southward into the pillage and carnage of Palestine where the original dwell--in the land were trampled under by the barbaric Canaanites out of the East.

Jean de Bonval, the tailor of Noyant near Soissons, who, despite wife and children, joined a Burgundian band, which went up and down the country thieving, pillaging, and, when occasion offered, smoking out the folk who had taken refuge in churches.

Urgas have been pillaging the treasury at Rak Goska for centuries to decorate the Drojim Palace, but would you believe that the roof still leaks?

Like the Vikings, whose shallow-drafted ships enabled them to sail up previously unnavigable European rivers and pillage villages - that rhymed - previously considered invulnerable to marine forces.

To say that it was an allopathic pillage would not be an extravagant statement.

That paltry place, which, to round a sentence, was pompously styled the ancient Joppa, held out only to the 6th of March, when it was taken by storm, and given up to pillage.

This request has preserved us in the past when prevaricating, jealous visitors would have pillaged us.

At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and pillage, which involved, in promiscuous destruction, the families and fortunes of the Barbarians.