manstealing

Etymology

From man + stealing.

manstealing means kidnapping human beings, especially with a view to their enslavement. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why this word is great

MANSTEALING — [Noun] The crime of kidnapping a person, especially for the purpose of enslavement. From man (“human being”) + stealing (“the act of theft”), a compound that confesses the crime's core—the predatory theft of a sovereign life. Unlike “kidnapping” (a general term for unlawful abduction) or “slave trading” (which sanitizes the subsequent commerce), manstealing names the foundational, violent rupture that converts a person into stolen property. It is the hand clamped over a mouth in the predawn dark, the shackle snapped shut on a shore that is no longer home, the ledger entry that lists a life as “cargo”—the primal act of translation from which an entire architecture of suffering is built, the crime of making a ghost of a self.

noun

kidnapping human beings, especially with a view to their enslavement.