confiscate
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to take something away from someone using your power or authority.
to seize private property by authority, often as a legal penalty or for security reasons. Transitive — requires a direct object.
Simple“The teacher had to confiscate the student's phone because he was using it during the exam.”
In context“Customs officials are authorised to confiscate any prohibited goods discovered during a routine inspection of international cargo.”
UsageAlways takes a direct object, usually the item being taken.
Synonyms
“It added that it had detained one Israeli and confiscated equipment on the outskirts of the Qusra and Jalud areas, near Nablus.”
“Photograph: Laura Bennetto “He was aware that his diaries could have been confiscated,” said the notebooks’ co-editor Mark Nixon, a professor of modern literature and Beckett studies at the University of Reading.”
From Latin cōnfiscātus, past participle of cōnfiscō, “to seize for the public treasury”, the treasury in question being the fiscus, Imperial Rome’s money-chest.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.