peculate

[pek-yuh-leyt]

verb (used with or without object)

peculated, peculating 

1. to steal or take dishonestly (money, especially public funds, or property entrusted to one's care); embezzle.

peculate

/ ˈpɛkjʊˌleɪt /

verb

1. to appropriate or embezzle (public money)

Other Word Forms

• peculation noun
• peculator noun
• unpeculating adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of peculate¹

First recorded in 1740–50; verb use of peculate “embezzlement” (now obsolete), from Latin past participle and noun pecūlātus “embezzled; embezzlement,” equivalent to pecūlā(rī) ) “to embezzle,” literally, “to make public property private” + -tus suffix of verbal action, derivative of pecu “wealth, livestock, movable property”; peculiar, -ate ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of peculate¹

C18: from Latin pecūlārī, from pecūlium private property (originally, cattle); see _peculiar

Example Sentences

It would appear that many charges of the biographers were made upon the authority of a peculating servant whom Bront� had angered by dismissal.

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He was once the Shah’s Prime Minister: he peculated, and was disgraced.

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He is coarse, uneducated, and vulgar; he never picked up any semblance of the class from whom he peculated; and has lived on, as he began, a "low comedy villain," and no more.

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He knows how pedants hoodwink people, how priests act the hypocrite, how physicians act the rake, how lawyers peculate.

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Or shall I tell him the story of Davoust at Hamburg, when the Syndicate accused him of peculating, and mentioned some millions that he had abstracted from the treasury.

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