predation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English predacion,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin praedātiō (“a plundering, act of taking booty”),^[4][5][3][2] from praedor (“to plunder, rob”),^[4][5][3] from praeda (“plunder, booty, prey”),^[5][6] the source of prey.^[5][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of plundering or pillaging: before 1475, in George Ashby's Dicta Philosophorum, in a manuscript of before 1500.^[4][3] Etymonline dates it to the late 15th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The word came in with the Latin sense of plundering,^[6][4] which widened to ruthless exploitation or victimization.^[4] The zoological sense, the preying of one animal on others, is recorded by the OED from 1870, in Harper's Magazine;^[4] Etymonline dates it to 1907,^[5] Barnhart dates the ecological use, for the effect of one species' preying on another, to 1932,^[3] and the Oxford Dictionary of English places the zoological sense in the 1930s.^[6] In business, from 1958, it is the practice of driving a competitor from the market by selling at uneconomically low prices.^[4]

Timeline

• before 1475 – the action of plundering or pillaging.^[4][3]
• 1870 – the preying of one animal on others.^[4]
• 1932 – in ecology, the effect of one species' preying on another.^[3]
• 1958 – in business, forcing competitors out of the market with very low prices.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The killing and eating of animals by other animals; a relationship between two species in which one, the predator, hunts the other, the prey.^[7][8][4]
2. The act of plundering or exploiting others; depredation: The villagers had suffered years of predation by bandits.^[8][4]
3. (business) The practice of forcing a competitor out of the market by selling at uneconomically low prices.^[4]

Related words

• predator
• depredation
• prey
• predatory
• predacious

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster