pillage

1. 1.

   steal goods; take as spoils

   “During the earthquake people looted the stores that were deserted by their owners”

   Synonymsplunderdespoillootreavestriprifleransackforay

   Broadertake

   Narrowerdeplume

Other forms of pillage

plural

pillages·

past tense

pillaged·

present participle

pillaging·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about pillage

What does pillage mean?

pillage means "goods or money obtained illegally". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pillage?

pillage has 2 syllables: pil-lage. The stress falls on "pil". In IPA it is /ˈpɪlɪdʒ/.

What is another word for pillage?

Close synonyms include loot, booty, plunder, prize, swag. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pillage a common word?

pillage is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.