the.com/plunder
Theft that brought its own soundtrack and ships.
means To seize goods by force, especially during war or raiding — looting on a grand, organized scale.
from Borrowed in the 1600s from German plündern, meaning to strip a house of its furniture (Plunder itself meant household goods, clothes, trash — the stuff of a home). English soldiers picked it up during the Thirty Years' War, where looting armies made the word infamous, and it sailed home meaning the act of robbing wholesale rather than just the stuff taken.
- origin
- German plunder meant household junk, not loot
- etymology twist
- 30 Years War soldiers stole the junk, renamed the act
- legal cousin
- piracy with a flag makes it privateering, not plunder
- modern use
- now just means your boss took credit again