reave means to plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 72 out of 100.
reave is pronounced /ɹiːv/.
Why “reave” is a great word
To plunder or rob, especially by force, or to split or tear apart. From Middle English reven, from Old English rēafian ("to plunder, rob"), from Proto-West Germanic *raubōn ("to rob"). Cognate with German rauben ("to rob") and related to Latin rumpō ("to break"). First attested before 900. Unlike "plunder," which conjures the organized spoils of war, or "rive," which cleaves only to the physical act of splitting, "reave" marries both despoiling and rending into a single, brutal gesture. It is the marauder's hand stripping the signet ring from a cold finger, the gale tearing sails from their yards, the ruthless severing of a bond of trust—a word for the violent, physical absence left when something is torn from its rightful place.
Etymology
From Middle English reven, from Old English rēafian, from Proto-West Germanic *raubōn.
Germanic cognates include West Frisian rave, Old English rēaf (“spoils, booty”)), and Old English past participle rofen (“torn, broken”), Norwegian rjuva, German rauben, Danish røve, and Swedish röva. Outside of Germanic, related to Latin rumpō (“to break”), Lithuanian rùpti (“to roughen”), Sanskrit रोपयति (ropayati, “to make suffer”)). See rob and reif.
verb
- To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.“And I for one am not convinced of the innocence of the model: it is as if we let a criminal make up the law as he or she ambles along, reaving right and left.”
- To deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence.“Few of the chroniclers of Nero’s reign have been accurate when relating the situation that obtained between the Emperor and his mother from the time when, reft of her German and Pannonian guards, she lived in a more or less solitary rage on one estate or another.”
- To split, tear, break apart.“There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, […]”
Down the rabbit hole
Every word is a door. Follow one.