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Showing results for expropriation. Search instead for expropriator.
Synonyms

expropriation

Cultural  

  1. The taking over of private property by a government, often without fair compensation but usually with a legal assertion that the government has a right to do so.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It proposes to address hierarchical orders, social rank, slavery, colonialism, expropriation and the interweaving of mind and body, matter and spirit.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025

“The Americans forced one of the most entrepreneurial countries on Earth into an expropriation lite,” says Dimitar Lilkov, a senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

From Barron's • Nov. 6, 2025

Its article quoted Alan Riley, an expert on global energy law at the Atlantic Council, who damned the proposal as “an expropriation document” and added, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 3, 2025

South Africa has previously said that Trump has misunderstood the country's new land expropriation act.

From BBC • Mar. 7, 2025

The decree also directed the chief prosecutor's office to increase control over the expropriation of farmland for construction and other nonagricultural purposes and to impose severe penalties on violators of the land protection law.

From Area Handbook for Bulgaria by Baluyut, Violeta D.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.