reave

Etymology 1

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 rumpere (“to break”), Lithuanian rùpti (“to roughen”), Sanskrit रोपयति (ropayati, “to make suffer”)). See rob and reif.

verb

1. (archaic) 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. 1997, Lawrence R. Schehr, Rendering French Realism, page 18
2. (archaic) 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. 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

Etymology 2

Alteration of rive by confusion with the above.

verb

1. (archaic) To split, tear, break apart.