confiscate
verbVerb Forms
| present simple I / you / we / they confiscate | |
| he / she / it confiscates | |
| past simple confiscated | |
| past participle confiscated | |
| -ing form confiscating |
- confiscate something
to officially take something away from somebody, especially as a punishment （尤指作为惩罚）没收，把…充公 Their land was confiscated after the war. 他们的土地在战后被没收。 The teacher threatened to confiscate their phones if they kept using them in class. 老师警告说，如果他们上课时继续使用手机就予以没收。 Our belongings were temporarily confiscated. 我们的财产被暂时没收了。
Oxford Collocations DictionaryConfiscate is used with these nouns as the object:- passport
- property
Word Originmid 16th cent.: from Latin confiscat- ‘put away in a chest, consigned to the public treasury’, from the verb confiscare, based on con- ‘together’ + fiscus ‘chest, treasury’.