confiscate

Etymology

From Latin cōnfiscō, cōnfiscātum (“to declare property of the fisc”).

verb

1. (transitive) To use one's authority to lay claim to and separate a possession from its holder.
   In schools it is common for teachers to confiscate electronic games and other distractions.
   We doe confiscate (Towards the satisfying of your accounts) All that you haue. c. 1613, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, London: John Waterson, published 1623, Act III, Scene 2
   1768, Alexander Dow (translator), The History of Hindostan by Muḥammad Qāsim Hindū Shāh Astarābādī, London: T. Becket & P.A. de Hondt, Volume 2, Section 4, p. 63, The Persian having evacuated the imperial provinces, the vizier became more cruel and oppressive than ever: he extorted money from the poor by tortures, and confiscated the estates of the nobility, upon false or very frivolous pretences.
   Whenever you strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, you know—you find a custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it’s their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’t pay the duty they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don’t deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all it is. 1894, Mark Twain, chapter 11, in Tom Sawyer Abroad, New York: Charles L. Webster & Co, page 174
   They took photographs of the bodies, but these were confiscated on return to Baghdad, and orders were given that nothing was to be said of what they had seen. 1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 2, p. 46

adj

1. (obsolete) Confiscated; seized and appropriated by the government for public use; forfeit.
   […] not to lay into the Exchequer, or Common Treasury, such goods as are confiscate, but to store them up as holy and consecrate things, which except it bee practised, confiscations, and fines of the Common people would bee frequent, and so this State would decay by weakening the people. 1642, Walter Raleigh, “Preservation of an Aristocraty”, in The Prince, or, Maxims of State, London, page 34