Definition of "rapine"
rapine
noun
countable and uncountable, plural rapines
The seizure of someone's property by force; pillage, plunder.
Quotations
This countrey ſwarmes with vile outragious men,That liue by rapine and by lawleſſe ſpoile,Fit ſouldiers for the wicked Tamburlaine.
c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, Act II, scene ii
And it was peculiar in their Temper, that they were fonder of what they could get by Rapine or Stealth at a greater diſtance, than much better Food provided for them at home.
1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author’s Great Love of His Native Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 262
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.
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, page 01
“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.”
1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), Part V: “The Merchant Princes”, Ch.10, pp.157–158