confiscation

confiscate | American Dictionary

confiscate
verb[ T ]
us/ˈkɑn·fəˌskeɪt/
to officially take private property away from someone, usually by legal authority:
Customs agents confiscated her bags.

confiscation

noun[ C/U ]us/ˌkɑn·fəˈskeɪ·ʃən/
[ U ]The law allows for confiscation of vehicles used in crimes.

confiscate | Business English

confiscate
verb[ T ]
uk /ˈkɒnfɪskeɪt/us
to officially take something away from someone, sometimes for a limited period, because they have done something illegal:
The organization has notified U.S. Customs to confiscate all imported fire extinguishers with the counterfeit labels.

confiscation

noun[ C or U ]uk /ˌkɒnfɪˈskeɪʃən/ us /ˌkɑː–/
Our investigation resulted in the confiscation of $227,000 in pirated material.

Examples of confiscate

confiscate
And once, later, the second prior of the monastery confiscated his writing tablets, and completely destroyed what he had written on the wax.
Inasmuch as one reason for the border closure was currency conversion, it was not uncommon for border crossers to have their money confiscated.
Large estates permanently confiscated from great delinquents and fractions of estates taken from lesser offenders could be bought by parliament's supporters.
Assuming the uniform distribution, the seller will always confiscate half of the grant.
By contrast, the capital income can be confiscated and the government can eventually own all the capital to run production.
First, they confiscated large land holdings and introduced state farms.
In this gigantic hall, one might say, the confiscated mead-benches on which many a warrior had once found his former identity are relocated.
If the same offence is committed the second time, the cutting and felling tools are confiscated.
As expected, it was not unusual for landlords to confiscate any crops that happened to be present.
Besides initiating lawsuits to regain their estates, royalists also raised loans to purchase from the state confiscated lands, thereby enabling them to maintain their livings.
The police immediately arrested the ringleaders, and the following day three rightist papers, which had published the pamphlet, were shut down and their editions confiscated.
Two days ago the psychologist was arrested and his tapes were confiscated.
For equilibrium prices below the expected value of buyer's valuation, the seller will always confiscate a part of the grant.
According to them, the country was bankrupted by an unnecessary war, and upright citizens' lands were confiscated to form unproductive co-operatives.
They might say that it is in our own interest, collectively, systematically to confiscate organs at death, since we might need one at some point.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.