expropriate
/ɪksˈprəʊprɪeɪt
/ /ɛksˈprəʊprɪeɪt/verb [with object]
1(Of the state or an authority) take (property) from its owner for public use or benefit: their assets were expropriated by the government...
- The state or a competent body or organ authorised by law may expropriate property in the public interest subject to the payment of just compensation.
- There, a family alleged that its property was expropriated by the Egyptian government in 1977 and then, in 1993, sold to Coca Cola.
- Governments expropriate private property all the time, and they always have.
Synonyms
seize, take away, take over, take, appropriate, take possession of, requisition, commandeer, claim, make claim to, assume, acquire, sequestrate, wrest;
impound, confiscate;
misappropriate, usurp, arrogate, hijack;
Law distrain, disseize, attach;
Scottish Law poind
1.1Dispossess (someone) of property: the measures expropriated the landlords...
- Economic progress was thus fastest in England, where landlords expropriated the peasants and created a dynamic agrarian capitalism.
- The entire wealth of the people was expropriated.
- In that way the tourist will not be expropriating the thief of the camera because it doesn't belong to him (the thief) in the first place.
Derivatives
expropriator
- He then goes on to outline a program of nationalization, suggesting a revival of the old rallying cry to ‘expropriate the expropriators.’
- In the fullness of time these workers would rise up and expropriate the expropriators.
- For hundreds of years, in fact, the intellectual classes have demanded the expropriation and even the extermination of capitalistic expropriators.
Origin
Late 16th century: from medieval Latin expropriat- 'taken from the owner', from the verb expropriare, from ex- 'out, from' + proprium 'property', neuter singular of proprius 'own'.