confiscate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cōnfiscātus (“seized for the public treasury”),^[2][3][4][5] past participle of cōnfiscō (“to lay away in a chest, seize for the public treasury”),^[4][5][6][7] formed from com- (“together”) and fiscus (“basket, purse, treasury”).^[8][2][4][6] Barnhart adds that Middle French confisquer may have influenced it.^[4] The OED notes that the participial adjective confiscate was in use before the verb,^[9] and that the verb had an earlier form, confisk, recorded from 1474, in Caxton, to 1624 and taken from Old French confisquer.^[9][3][10] The Latin noun first meant a basket of rushes or wicker,^[11][3] and Ayto explains its later sense from the baskets used by tax collectors.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

To appropriate private property to the sovereign or public treasury as a penalty: before 1533, in Lord Berners's translation of Guevara's Golden Boke, where the adjective, of property so forfeited, is also first found.^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the adjective to about 1533 but the verb to 1552,^[2] Barnhart the verb to 1552,^[4] and Etymonline to the 1550s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word was at first narrowly legal and financial: the goods or estate of a traitor or criminal were adjudged forfeit to the treasury.^[3][9][12] The transaction was then described from the other side, the person being deprived of property, from before 1618 in Raleigh, a use the OED marks obsolete and the Shorter Oxford archaic.^[9][13] Johnson (1755) still defined the verb as transferring private property to the prince or the public as a penalty, and repeated Cowel's account of the hamper or basket in which the emperor's treasure was kept.^[14] Milton's use in 1641 of taking something from an individual by authority stayed isolated,^[9] but from 1819, in Byron's Don Juan, a looser sense took hold, seizing as if by authority, with no state treasury involved.^{[9][3][11][13]} The participial form confiscate survives as an archaic adjective, as in Shakespeare's "Thy lands and goods are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate",^[14][13][2] which Johnson noted was stressed on the first syllable there, though his own headword stresses the second.^[14] The noun confiscation, recorded from 1543 and taken from Middle French, comes before the verb in Barnhart's dates.^[4]

Timeline

• 1474 – the earlier verb confisk (obsolete by 1624).^[9]
• before 1533 – to appropriate property as a penalty; adjective, forfeited.^[9][2]
• 1593 – to forfeit to the sovereign or state (obsolete by 1641).^[9]
• before 1618 – to deprive a person of property as forfeited; adjective, so deprived.^[9]
• 1819 – to seize as if by authority.^[9][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To seize by or as if by authority: Customs officers confiscated the cigarettes.^[2][9][13]
2. To appropriate private property for the state or public treasury, especially as a penalty.^[9][2][15]
3. (archaic) To deprive a person of property as forfeit to the state.^[13][9]

Adjective

1. (archaic) Seized by the state; forfeited.^[2][15][9]
2. (archaic) Having lost property through confiscation.^[2][15][9]

Word family

• confiscation
• confiscator
• confiscatory
• confiscatable
• unconfiscated
• reconfiscate

Related words

• fiscal
• fisc
• confisk

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins