[a. Hindī lūṭ, according to some scholars repr. Skr. lōtra, lōptra booty, spoil, f. the root lup = rup to break; others refer it to Skr. luṇṭ to rob.] Goods (esp. articles of considerable value) taken from an enemy, a captured city, etc., in time of war; also, in wider sense, something taken by force or with violence; booty, plunder, spoil; now sometimes transf., illicit gains, ‘pillage’ (e.g., by a public servant). Also, the action or process of looting.
[1788. Indian Vocab. (Y.), Loot, plunder, pillage.]
1839. Blackw. Mag., XLV. 104. He always found the talismanic gathering-word Loot (plunder), a sufficient bond of union in any part of India.
1858–9. Russell, Diary India (1860), II. xvii. 340. Why, the race [of camp followers] is suckled on loot, fed on theft, swaddled in plunder, and weaned on robbery.
1860. Hook, Lives Abps. (1862), II. vii. 505. The horses in the archbishop’s stables the murderers appropriated as their own fee,—or, as we should now say, as loot.
1876. Blackw. Mag., CXIX. 115/1. Public servants [in Turkey] have vied with one another in a system of universal loot.
