Etymologically
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loot

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is borrowed from Hindi लूट (lūṭ, “plunder, booty”),[2][3][4][5][6] taken up by the British in India.[7][4][8] The source of the Hindi word is disputed.[3][1] Some trace it to Sanskrit लोप्त्र (loptra, “booty, stolen property”), through a shortened form,[3][9][4][1] from a root meaning "to break";[3][9] Barnhart, Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary carry it back to Proto-Indo-European *reup- (“to snatch, break”),[4][7][2] the root of rumpō (“to break”).[4][9] Others refer it to the Sanskrit verb लुण्ट् (luṇṭ, “to rob, plunder”),[3][1][10][11][12] and Partridge and Klein relate the two.[13][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plunder, pillage: the word is first recorded in Stockdale's Indian Vocabulary of 1788, which glosses it with those two words.[8][15][4] Etymonline's first record is Charles James's Military Dictionary (1802), which calls it an Indian term for plunder or pillage,[7] and the OED's is in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of 1839.[3]

Semantic evolution

For half a century the word belonged to the colloquial English of the British in India.[8] According to Hobson-Jobson it gradually found acceptance in England between the Chinese war of 1841, the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and was entered in the slang dictionaries;[8] Hotten listed it in 1860,[15] and Admiral Smyth's glossary of 1867 called it a term adopted from China.[8] Green's Dictionary of Slang counts it as standard English by the late 19th century.[15] The verb followed the noun: Etymonline dates it to 1821,[7] the OED and Barnhart to 1842, when it was used absolutely, with "to sack a city" from 1845 and "to carry off as loot" from 1847.[3][4] From 1851 it also meant simply to rob a person or steal a thing, originally and chiefly in South Asia.[3] The noun widened in the same way: from booty taken in war to anything taken by force, stolen goods in American criminal use (1886),[15] the illicit gains of public officials,[10][16] and finally, in slang, money (1943).[3] Wiktionary dates the figurative use to American English of the 1920s, and its general meaning to the 1950s.[1]

Timeline

  • 1788 – noun, plunder, pillage, in Stockdale's Indian Vocabulary.[8][15][4]
  • 1802 – in Charles James's Military Dictionary, as an Indian term.[7]
  • 1839 – goods taken from an enemy or a captured city in war.[3]
  • 1842 – verb, to plunder (used absolutely).[3][4]
  • 1845 – verb, to plunder or sack a city or building.[3][10]
  • 1847 – verb, to carry off as loot.[3]
  • 1851 – verb, to rob a person or steal a thing, chiefly in South Asia.[3]
  • 1860 – listed in Hotten's slang dictionary.[15]
  • 1886 – stolen goods, in American criminal use.[15]
  • 1943 – slang, money.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Goods, especially valuable ones, taken from an enemy or from a captured town in war, or during a riot; booty, plunder: The soldiers carried their loot back to camp in wagons.[6][10][3][2]
  2. Stolen money or goods, or anything taken by force; also the illicit gains of public officials: The police found the loot from the robbery in a garage.[6][10][2]
  3. (informal) Money or wealth.[6][2][3]
  4. (informal) Valuable things received, such as presents: The children compared their birthday loot.[2][10]
  5. The act of looting.[6][16]

Verb

  1. To take goods from a place by force or without right, especially in war or during disorder; to pillage or sack: Rioters looted the shops on the main street.[6][10][3][2]
  2. To steal goods or money, especially on a large scale; to carry off as loot.[6][10][3]
  3. To rob or plunder, without an object.[10][3]

Word family

  • looter
  • unlooted

Usage notes

Two other words are spelled loot.[3][15] One, in American and Australian slang, is a shortening of lieutenant in its North American pronunciation, recorded from 1898 (Green's Dictionary of Slang has lieut from 1885).[3][16][10][15] The other was the name of the ladle or skimmer used to take the scum off the brine in the salt-works of Cheshire and Staffordshire, from 1669; the OED takes it from Dutch.[3][17]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  7. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  8. ^ a b c d e f Yule, Henry; Burnell, A. C. (1903), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, new ed. by William Crooke, London: John Murray
  9. ^ a b c Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  14. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h i Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  16. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  17. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)