pillage
/ˈpɪl.ɪd͡ʒ/
pillage verb: to loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.
Verb
pillage (third-person singular simple present pillages, present participle pillaging, simple past and past participle pillaged)
- To loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.
- Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies [France], but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county.1911, Sabine Baring-Gould, Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe, Chapter VI: Cliff Castles—Continued
- So far as Pridger was concerned the game was up. He had cooked the buying, he had cooked the selling, he had systematically pillaged the stock.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
- Synonyms:
- harry
Noun
pillage (countable and uncountable, plural pillages)
- The spoils of war.
- Which pillage they with merry march bring home.1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- Synonyms:
- booty
- The act of pillaging.
- An employee at a brewery in Kinshasa rated the aftermath as more catastrophic to the company than the direct violence: It was more the consequences of the pillages that hit Bracongo – the poverty of the people, our friends who buy beer.2013, Zoë Marriage, Formal Peace and Informal War: Security and Development in Congo
pillage meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
pillage in Tamil
- pillage, plunder, robbery
- கொள்ளை koḷḷai
pillage in Urdu
- غارت, غارتگری, لوٹ, لوٹ مار, غبن کرنا, لوٹنا
pillage in Bengali
- ডাকাতি, লুণ্ঠন করা
pillage in Malayalam
- കൊള്ളയടിക്കൽ, കവർച്ച, കൊള്ള
More languagesFewer languages
- pillage in Kannada
- ಸೂರೆ, ಕೊಳ್ಳೆ
- pillage in Arabic
- غَزَاوَة ḡazāwa
- pillage in Indonesian
- menjarah
Examples of pillage in a sentence
- The Crusaders meant to wrest Jerusalem from heathendom, but they managed to pillage a number of lands in Christendom along the way.
- They are allowing Enron to continue to pillage and burn the West Coast.
- The krogan live with an attitude of "kill, pillage, and be selfish, for tomorrow we die."
Synonyms of pillage
Forms of pillage
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | pillages |
| present participle | pillaging |
| past participle | pillaged |
| past | pillaged |
| Noun | |
| plural | pillages |
Origin of pillage
From Old French pillage, from piller (“plunder”), from an unattested meaning of Late Latin piliō, probably a figurative use of Latin pilō (“to remove (hair)”), from pilus (“hair”).
Words formed from pillage
Words that rhyme with pillage
Questions about pillage
- What does pillage mean?
- Pillage means to loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.
- What is pillage in Tamil?
- Pillage in Tamil is கொள்ளை (koḷḷai). See Pillage meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is pillage?
- Pillage can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce pillage?
- Pillage is pronounced /ˈpɪl.ɪd͡ʒ/.
- What is the past tense of pillage?
- The past tense of pillage is pillaged.
Words near pillage in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pillage (page history and authors); கொள்ளை (Tamil) (page history and authors); pillage (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pillage (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pillage (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pillage (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-pillage.ogg, en-au-pillage.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pillage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pillage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.