Definition of "confiscate"
confiscate
verb
third-person singular simple present confiscates, present participle confiscating, simple past and past participle confiscated
(transitive) To use one's authority to lay claim to and separate a possession from its holder.
Quotations
The Persian having evacuated the imperial provinces, the vizier became more cruel and oppressive than ever: he extorted money from the poor by tortures, and confiscated the estates of the nobility, upon false or very frivolous pretences.
1768, Alexander Dow (translator), The History of Hindostan by Muḥammad Qāsim Hindū Shāh Astarābādī, London: T. Becket & P.A. de Hondt, Volume 2, Section 4, p. 63
Whenever you strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, you know—you find a custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it’s their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’t pay the duty they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don’t deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all it is.
1894, Mark Twain, chapter 11, in Tom Sawyer Abroad, New York: Charles L. Webster & Co, page 174
adjective
not comparable
(obsolete) Confiscated; seized and appropriated by the government for public use; forfeit.
Quotations
Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum,Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate.
c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene ii]
[…] thy lands and goodsAre, by the laws of Venice, confiscateUnto the state of Venice.
c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene i]
[…] not to lay into the Exchequer, or Common Treasury, such goods as are confiscate, but to store them up as holy and consecrate things, which except it bee practised, confiscations, and fines of the Common people would bee frequent, and so this State would decay by weakening the people.
1642, Walter Raleigh, “Preservation of an Aristocraty”, in The Prince, or, Maxims of State, London, page 34