kidnap
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to take someone away illegally by force, often to demand money for their return.
to seize and detain a person unlawfully, often involving transportation to a secret location for the purpose of demanding a ransom.
Simple“The gang planned to kidnap the businessman and demand a million dollars.”
In context“The militants attempted to kidnap the diplomat during his morning commute, but the security detail managed to repel the attack.”
PitfallThe criminals were accused of kidnapping to the child. The criminals were accused of kidnapping the child.Kidnap is a transitive verb; it takes a direct object without a preposition.
“Deren Akyeam-Pong admitted last year that he was hired to kidnap Pleterski in Toronto at gunpoint on Dec.”
“Mo-cap Mark Rylance, whose cutesy ungrammatical babbling should have been left on the printed page, is the 24ft Big Friendly Giant who kidnaps an orphan girl, Sophie.”
From kid + nap (“to nab; to grab”). Originally Thieves' cant, referring to the practice of stealing children and shipping them to colonies or plantations as laborers. First attested c. 1680.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.