rapine

From Middle English rapyne, from Old French rapine, from Latin rapīna, from rapiō. Cognate of English rape and 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.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], part 1, 2nd edition, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, OCLC 932920499; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene ii:

     This countrey ſwarmes with vile outragious men,
     That liue by rapine and by lawleſſe ſpoile,
     Fit ſouldiers for the wicked Tamburlaine.

   • c. 1588–1593, William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act V, scene ii]:

     Good Rapine, stab him: he is a ravisher.

   • 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.”

• 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. (transitive) To plunder.
   • 1619, George Buck, History of 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, ripane