How to Use pillage in a Sentence

pillage

1 of 2 noun
  • When, if ever, does an act of rescue become an act of pillage?
    — David Brown, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Dec. 2022
  • Considering all the wars and all the rape and pillage that has taken place?
    — Ellen McGirt, Fortune, 15 Aug. 2019
  • Back at the pillage ants' home nest, a typical colony includes about four workers and a dozen slaves.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 14 Jan. 2014
  • Conquer, pillage, and blow things up, making the same mistakes that doomed them to search for new lands in the first place.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 18 Apr. 2020
  • Beyond these black sites, front-line communities face the threat of pillage.
    — Jack Losh, Washington Post, 26 June 2017
  • The people living in the Nordic world during the Viking age did raid and pillage.
    — National Geographic, 22 Jan. 2017
  • Once the gold or bitcoin starts to dry up, people turn angry, looking for scapegoats and pillage.
    — Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2023
  • In a bid to prevent the pillage, Kim started a Reddit thread three months ago.
    — The Washington Post, The Mercury News, 10 Jan. 2017
  • In the annals of colonial exploitation, few episodes were as brazen as the pillage of Benin.
    — Wsj Books Staff, WSJ, 4 June 2021
  • The people who've made it out are telling us horror stories of mass killings, of rape and pillage of women and families.
    — ABC News, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Slave-trading, mostly, along with mass murder, pillage and corruption.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 6 Oct. 2023
  • That patchwork, conservationists argue, has left the high seas open to pillage.
    — Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Suddenly, other buggies veer into view, intent on pillage and theft.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 13 Sep. 2019
  • The Genghis Khans who come to rape and pillage are never good for the Bristol Bay fishery.
    — John Schandelmeier, Anchorage Daily News, 31 July 2021
  • Both describe, in numbing detail, decades of pillage, rape, starvation, and torture.
    — John Waterbury, Foreign Affairs, 12 Aug. 2019
  • Señorita Navarro opened the door and was greeted by language of the vilest sort from marauders whose sole intent seemed to be to loot and pillage.
    — Robert Kolarik, San Antonio Express-News, 5 Mar. 2018
  • The tentacles of the Western quest for domination are still finding new ways to dig into the earth and pillage for profit.
    — Alicia Lutes, USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2021
  • The concept of white supremacy is one of the oldest racist philosophies, which originated from their need to explain their need to rape, pillage and conquer the world.
    — Michael Harriot, The Root, 18 Aug. 2017
  • Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society?
    — Luke Johnson, Fortune, 15 Aug. 2019
  • But writing a history of empire, pillage, bloodthirstiness and dogma cannot be done in a vacuum, ignoring the dark side of their appeal.
    — Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2021
  • There is no question about the general philosophy that underlay this great act of public pillage and economic rapine.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 13 Mar. 2013
  • What about the actual diabolical activity—the violence, the rape, the pillage, the sheer wastage of lives?
    — James Wood, The New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2022
  • The rebels are depicted as a rag-tag band of bandits, emerging from the bush on motorcycles to shoot the local population and pillage police stations.
    — Sebastian Shukla, CNN, 28 May 2021
  • In Maeve's understanding, the Ghost Nation showed up in the name of violence, to attack, pillage and plunder.
    — refinery29.com, 11 June 2018
  • In 1956, Graham compared the Soviet Union to a gangster set loose to murder and pillage.
    — David Briggs, cleveland.com, 21 Feb. 2018
  • Rebel groups, some supported by Rwanda and Uganda, pillage villages, steal livestock, murder residents and rape women.
    — Ruth MacLean, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2023
  • FanDuel and DraftKings are optimized for power players to rape and pillage regular players over and over again.
    — Jay Caspian Kang, New York Times, 6 Jan. 2016
  • Rebel groups, some supported by Rwanda and Uganda, pillage villages, steal livestock, murder residents, and rape women.
    — Jason Horowitz, BostonGlobe.com, 31 Jan. 2023
  • In retaliation, British forces began a brutal occupation of the city that led to many casualties and widespread destruction and pillage.
    — Jane Recker, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Puerto Rico is much more involved in helping commercial fisherman pillage these resources than supporting what could be a top-shelf recreational destination.
    — T. Edward Nickens, Field & Stream, 27 May 2020

pillage

2 of 2 verb
  • The town was pillaged and burned.
  • The enemy pillaged the town.
  • Their crops had been scorched, their villages had been pillaged.
    — New York Times, 22 June 2018
  • Or showed up as a band of pirates, here to pillage and plunder.
    — John Canzano, oregonlive, 31 Oct. 2021
  • For decades, tomb raiders have pillaged sites across the country, selling them on the black market.
    — Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN Money, 19 June 2026
  • Its funds could be sold off, then the investments pillaged off on the secondary market.
    — Jessica Mathews, Fortune, 20 Mar. 2023
  • This should never be an excuse to rape and pillage our environment.
    — Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Nov. 2021
  • In one night the neighborhood was pillaged and set ablaze, its people massacred.
    — Nehemiah D. Frank, Time, 18 Dec. 2019
  • People were running through the street, pillaging the stores along 63rd Street.
    — Chicago Tribune, 9 Apr. 2018
  • The posts vow to pillage through suburbs threatening to rape and murder residents.
    — Mica Soellner, Washington Examiner, 5 June 2020
  • Men spend most days hunting with bow and arrow or chopping into hollow tree limbs to pillage honey from beehives.
    — Herman Pontzer, Scientific American, 12 Dec. 2022
  • In other words, Wakanda was not raped and pillaged by Europeans.
    — Elizabeth Wellington, Philly.com, 16 Feb. 2018
  • From ants that pillage your pantry to banana-loving fruit flies or fleas that piggyback on your pets, the battle against bugs is ongoing.
    — Natalie Schumann, Country Living, 22 June 2020
  • Many accuse the governing elite of pillaging the oil-rich country’s wealth while many Iraqis live in poverty.
    — Saphora Smith, NBC News, 6 Nov. 2019
  • Both are trying to protect their people from outsiders who would pillage their natural resources and disrupt their way of life.
    — Vulture, 16 Nov. 2022
  • Many prehistoric structures were pillaged for rock, but a remarkable number are intact.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
  • Imagineer Kathy Mangum, in the parks blog post, explains that Redd had pillaged the town’s rum supply.
    — Dewayne Bevil, OrlandoSentinel.com, 19 Mar. 2018
  • The pace is so speedy that deer must pillage minerals from other parts of their skeleton, only to cast their antlers away and sprout a new pair when the seasons turn once more.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 2 Aug. 2022
  • Never mind the centuries of Viking sacking and pillaging around Europe.
    — Joshua Robinson, WSJ, 15 June 2018
  • Allowing our leaders, businesses and ourselves to rape and pillage the planet is nothing short of species suicide.
    — Philip Chard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 19 Apr. 2018
  • But many of those dumbbells are already spoken for, so those who didn’t successfully pillage their local gyms may still face delays on orders for new weights.
    — Jenni Avins, Quartz, 26 Aug. 2020
  • Humans pillaged the elephant birds’ nests, which likely played a role in driving the animals towards extinction.
    — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 23 Apr. 2018
  • In 2021, gang members invaded the temple, pillaged its artifacts and burned it to the ground.
    — Amanda Coletta, Washington Post, 3 June 2023
  • If peaceable trading isn't your dream, consider the corsair life, pillaging other ships for their precious cargo.
    — Alan Bradley, Space.com, 7 Oct. 2025
  • Picking up where episode 7 left off, Wayne (Toby Wallace) wakes up to Rue pillaging his safe.
    — Britt Hayes, Entertainment Weekly, 1 June 2026
  • Yes, the Beatles wanted to hold your hand, but the Stones wanted to pillage your village, make off with its women, and salt the earth on the way out of town.
    — Chris Nashawaty, EW.com, 24 Aug. 2021
  • The Empress controls the universe, and pillages the past for technologies to keep the universe safe from an alien species known as The Bleed.
    — Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 15 June 2019
  • The Dodgers, known for pillaging other organizations’ pitching, took him off the Rangers hand.
    — Evan Grant, Dallas News, 29 June 2023
  • Unlike those of bygone eras, who pillaged the underground in search of new sounds to bring to the mainstream, this brand of musician is fixated on pop’s own history.
    — Shaad D’souza, New York Times, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Employees shouldn't be left in the dark as companies are pillaged for their resources after equity firms load them down with debt and the top officials walk away with bonuses.
    — Kate Gibson, CBS News, 13 Jan. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pillage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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