Meaning
6 senses(archaic, countable, literary, uncountable)Property obtained or seized by force or violence; booty, plunder, spoils.
(archaic, literary, uncountable)Of a (predatory) animal: seizing or devouring of food or prey; predation.
(archaic, figuratively, literary, uncountable)Gluttony, greed, rapacity; also, the quality of being predatory; predatoriness.
(archaic, countable, literary, obsolete, rare)A predatory animal; a predator.
(archaic, literary, obsolete, uncountable)Obtaining or seizing property by force or violence; pillage, plunder, robbery; (countable, chiefly in the plural) an instance of this.
(archaic, literary, obsolete, uncountable)That which a predatory animal seizes for food; prey; also (hunting) an animal which is hunted; quarry.
Origin
The noun is derived from Middle English ravin, ravine, raven (“rapine, robbery; rape; forcThe noun is derived from Middle English ravin, ravine, raven (“rapine, robbery; rape; force, violence; greed, rapacity; stolen goods, booty, plunder; prey, quarry; pursuit of prey; predatoriness, voracity”), from Anglo-Norman ravein, raveine, ravine (“rapine, robbery; rape; force, violence; greed, rapacity; impetuousness; stolen goods”), Middle French ravine, and Old French ravine (“rapine, robbery; force, violence; impetuousness”), from Latin rapīna (“pillage, plunder, robbery, rapine; booty, plunder”), from rapiō (“to abduct, carry off; to grab, snatch; to rape; to steal”) (from Proto-Italic *rapjō (“to seize, take away”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rep- (“to snatch”)) + -īna (suffix forming abstract nouns).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: ravinsSynonyms
15 synonymsWord family
3 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.