noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act of stealing during a crisis such as a war, riot or natural disaster, when law enforcement is ineffective or absent.

   "Near-synonym: plundering"

2. 2
   plundering during riots or in wartime wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of loot form-of, gerund, participle, present

   "While looting the stores the looters took the opportunity for revenge by destroying what they didn't steal."

Synonyms

All synonyms

assaultattackbanditrybatteringbrigandagebrigandism

Example

More examples

"The best way to conceptualize looting is as similar to pollution, a byproduct of the economics of the antiquities trade."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.