siphoning

Verb

siphon (third-person singular simple present siphons, present participle siphoning, simple past and past participle siphoned)

1. (transitive) To transfer (liquid) by means of a siphon.
   • He used a rubber tube to siphon petrol from the car's fuel tank.
2. (broadly, transitive) To transfer directly.
   • Today's teenagers are siphoning dangerous levels of membrane-damaging noise directly into their eardrums, with long-term effects that otologists prophesy will be disastrous for their hearing and lead to an epidemic of middle-aged deafness in the next thirty years.2012 Sep, Rupert Christiansen, “Quiet, Please”, in Literary Review
3. (figuratively, often, transitive) To steal or skim off something, such as money, in small amounts; to embezzle.
   • In Juchipila power to the whole community of thirty thousand evaporated as the supraheavy grid buried alongside the little mountain cantina siphoned energy from the entire west-central portion of the Namerican national power net.2009, Alan Dean Foster, Montezuma Strip, →ISBN

   Synonyms:

   misappropriate

See all 6 meanings of siphon