Loot Meaning
/luːt/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounSynonym of booty, goods seized from an enemy by violence, particularly (historical) during the sacking of a town in war or (video games) after successful combat.
nounSynonym of sack, the plundering of a city, particularly during war.
Sentence Examples
The thief outwitted the police and got away with his loot.
The thieves divvied up the stolen loot among themselves.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The thieves loaded the expensive ____ into the back of their waiting getaway van.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The pirates spent several days dividing the ____ they had stolen from the merchant ship earlier today.
Word Origin & History
Borrowed from Hindi लूट (lūṭ, “booty”), either from Sanskrit लोप्त्र (loptra, “booty, stolen property”) or लुण्ट् (luṇṭ, “to rob, plunder”). The figurative meaning developed in American English in the 1920s, resulting in a generalized meaning by the 1950s.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Loot, plunder, pillage."
— 1788, Indian Vocabulary, page 77:
"He always found the talismanic gathering-word Loot (plunder), a sufficient bond of union in any part of India."
— 1839, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, number 45, page 104:
"Why, the race [of camp followers] is suckled on loot, fed on theft, swaddled in plunder, and weaned on robbery."
— 1860, William Howard Russell, My Diary in India in the Year 1858–9, volume II, page 340:
"The horses in the archbishop's stables the murderers appropriated as their own fee,—or, as we should now say, as loot."
— 1862, Walter F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, volume II, page 505:
"But yet, with the persistent avariciousness of the white man, the Arabs clung to their loot, and when morning came forced the demoralized Manyuema to take up their burdens of death and stagger on into the jungle."
— 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 146:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The thieves loaded the expensive ____ into the back of their waiting getaway van.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The pirates spent several days dividing the ____ they had stolen from the merchant ship earlier today.