How to Use plunder in a Sentence

plunder

1 of 2 verb
  • Thieves had long ago plundered the tomb.
  • The village was plundered by the invading army.
  • The soldiers continued plundering for days.
  • Which were left to be plundered and destroyed?
    — Amer Matar, The Dial, 26 May 2026
  • The area has been plundered for centuries.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2026
  • Or showed up as a band of pirates, here to pillage and plunder.
    — John Canzano, oregonlive, 31 Oct. 2021
  • When trust is the order of the day, predators are free to plunder.
    — Jim McDermott, Vulture, 2 Feb. 2024
  • Its style and ideas live on in a realm beyond copyright, free for all to plunder.
    — The Economist, 23 Sep. 2020
  • And, as the water keeps dwindling, plundered by drought and overuse, these costs could rise.
    — Raymond Zhong, New York Times, 6 June 2023
  • No call out of centuries of British bloody conquest and plunder.
    — Omid Scobie, Harper's BAZAAR, 25 Mar. 2022
  • His goal is to restore what’s been unfairly plundered by the white man.
    — Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 2023
  • At the end of the main game, the goose scampers across a model of the village just plundered.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Trump is not keeping that a secret but is being quite open about plundering it all.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 18 Jan. 2026
  • There is also surely African art that has been plundered from its homeland.
    — Ira Madison Iii, GQ, 19 June 2018
  • Players can plunder a dragon’s hoard one week and battle an undead star fleet the next.
    — Rob Wieland, Forbes.com, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Along with goods for trade and plundered wealth, concepts of the soul have traveled the networks of empire.
    — Harpers Magazine, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Along with goods for trade and plundered wealth, concepts of the soul have traveled the networks of empire.
    — David Wingrave, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Though there were many police officers present for the march, looters were able to plunder stores with few to stop them.
    — Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY, 31 May 2020
  • This is just the bounty plundered from 15 minutes of research.
    — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 17 Apr. 2023
  • But the new-model Viking had considerably more on his mind than plunder.
    — Joshua Levine, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Mar. 2022
  • The official royal burial tombs had long since been plundered over the centuries.
    — Roger Catlin, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 June 2023
  • Now, Mike settles for watching the squirrels plunder his apple trees.
    — Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 27 June 2022
  • Family members try to step in, to no avail, as the guardian proceeds to sell the woman’s home and plunder her assets.
    — Mary Jacobs, Dallas News, 27 May 2021
  • Netflix is continuing to plunder the world of video podcasts.
    — Peter White, Deadline, 17 Dec. 2025
  • The attackers were largely free to plunder, murder and kidnap.
    — Patrick Kingsley, New York Times, 22 Dec. 2023
  • One source that the service could plunder from is ABC, which Disney owns.
    — Frank Pallotta, CNN, 26 Nov. 2019
  • Abroad, America’s élite soldiers killed and plundered.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
  • The colonists took up where Tippu Tip left off, plundering the forests for ivory and other resources.
    — Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
  • What’s the reward for being the most productively plundered of the mid-majors?
    — Joe Rexrode, New York Times, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Last fall, copper thieves plundered about a dozen public streetlights over three city blocks, leaving their neighborhood in the dark.
    — Gavin J. Quinton, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2026

plunder

2 of 2 noun
  • All evidence suggested that the plunder of the tomb had happened long ago.
  • The human zoo was gone, but silence about the plunder remained.
    — Adam Hochschild, The Atlantic, 15 Dec. 2019
  • What was at stake in the Miller case, in other words, was much more than one man’s decades of plunder.
    — Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Anchorage Daily News, 9 July 2021
  • These, too, were running out, owing to slaughter and plunder.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 26 June 2023
  • Alabama’s three-term state treasurer knew his life of promise and plunder was at an end.
    — al, 7 Aug. 2019
  • Both men built a nation while making possible the plunder of millions of people.
    — David S. Reynolds, The New York Review of Books, 9 Feb. 2022
  • It’s forged with the intention of being passed from hand to hand, taken as plunder, given as a gift or handed down to heirs.
    — David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Nov. 2021
  • The Pirates contributed to the plunder with two errors (both of which produced runs).
    — Bill Plunkett, Oc Register, 10 June 2026
  • The theft of raccoons provided a moment of dark levity among the other plunder and tragedy.
    — Peter Weber, The Week, 13 Nov. 2022
  • Not incorrectly, it was viewed as a mechanism oligarchs used for plunder.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2022
  • These Scandinavians didn’t venture to new lands solely in search of plunder.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Jan. 2020
  • What if the continent’s vast riches were never stolen and the plunder of black bodies never happened?
    — The Root Staff, The Root, 16 Feb. 2018
  • The migrants can kill, plunder, and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 4 July 2019
  • But the full reality of Nazi plunder was far more mundane, which was perhaps the essence of its cruelty.
    — James McAuley, Town & Country, 6 Aug. 2019
  • The fight, which is getting ugly, is emblematic of a bigger one of identity, rights and plunder.
    — Ellen McGirt, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Others entered the legislative chambers and scoured offices for plunder.
    — Simon Romero, New York Times, 13 Jan. 2023
  • Prisoners of war were paraded before Rome, as well as the plunder gained through the victory.
    — Andrea Frediani, National Geographic, 10 July 2019
  • McFall still is not certain that Asian giant hornets were responsible for the plunder of his hive.
    — Mike Baker, BostonGlobe.com, 2 May 2020
  • With probes ongoing in several countries, the extent of the plunder is still unknown, but is set to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.
    — David Herbling, Bloomberg.com, 4 Sep. 2020
  • Political leaders and celebrities had expressed their sadness, while many pointed out the looting and plunder of colonial rule.
    — Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2022
  • The barbarians are, as in the age of Benedict and Augustine, never far off, bent on plunder and destruction.
    — Andrew Doran, National Review, 3 Mar. 2022
  • The total value of the plunder is contested — and the subject of the dueling lawsuits as Brink’s and the jewelers feud over how much they should be paid.
    — Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2022
  • Hampered by their haul of plunder, however, the Spanish were too slow in crossing Lake Texcoco.
    — Amanda Foreman, WSJ, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Upstairs, in the grand rooms, the only bust of Leopold on display is made of ivory and aims to explain how the plunder of the country extended to the wholesale slaughter of elephants.
    — Washington Post, 11 June 2020
  • Marcos had placed the Philippines under martial law in 1972 in an era that was marked by widespread atrocities and economic plunder.
    — Jim Gomez, ajc, 13 Nov. 2021
  • To the family’s lawyer, Markus Stötzel, the case is a typical example of Nazi plunder in need of immediate restoration.
    — Devorah Lauter, ARTnews.com, 29 June 2026
  • Stories about the plunder of Spanish holdings were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, says Kenyon.
    — National Geographic, 5 Jan. 2018
  • In the film, her brief, fiery encounters with Victoria (played by Amanda Root) emphasize the plunder that marked British colonial rule.
    — Shashank Bengali, star-telegram, 18 July 2017
  • In Gentileschi’s version of Judith and Holofernes, the servant aids her mistress, preventing her defilement and the plunder of their country.
    — Dallas News, 19 Sep. 2022
  • Worn as a brooch by Queen Victoria, the Kohinoor, one of the largest diamonds in the world, was one of many plunders of British imperialism.
    — Leila Sackur, NBC News, 6 May 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'plunder.' 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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