pillage

Etymology

From Old French pillage, from piller (“plunder”), from an unattested meaning of Late Latin piliō, probably a figurative use of Latin pilō (“I remove (hair)”), from pilus (“hair”).

verb

1. (transitive, intransitive) To loot or plunder by force, especially in time of war.
   1911, Sabine Baring-Gould, Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe, Chapter VI: Cliff Castles—Continued, Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies [France], but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county.

noun

1. The spoils of war.
2. The act of pillaging.
   An employee at a brewery in Kinshasa rated the aftermath as more catastrophic to the company than the direct violence: It was more the consequences of the pillages that hit Bracongo – the poverty of the people, our friends who buy beer. 2013, Zoë Marriage, Formal Peace and Informal War: Security and Development in Congo