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The act of plundering, despoiling, or snatching away. [R.] Speed.

glect of order or system; irregularity. From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. Pope.

bscurity or difficulties. Their immersion into water and their emersion out of the same. Knatchbull.

[Obs. or Poetic] He to him leapt, and that same envious gage Of victor's glory from him snatched away. Spenser.

A snatching away. [Obs.] Cockeram.

o exempt from military duty, or from jury service; to exempt from fear or pain. Death So snatched will not exempt us from the pain We are by doom to pay. Milton.

The act of burying with funeral rites. [Obs.] Knatchbull.

To look with a sudden, rapid cast of the eye; to snatch a momentary or hasty view. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. Shak.

To grope with the hands, as in the dark. [Scot.] To glaum at, to grasp or snatch at; to aspire to. Wha glaum'd at kingdoms three. Burns.

To gripe suddenly; to seize; to snatch; to clutch.

me, and told me lies. Judg. xvi. 13. He will not ... Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence. Milton.

To sweep, snatch, draw, or huddle together; to take by a promiscuous sweep. [Obs.] Causes and effects which I thus raff up together. Carew.

To snatch away; to seize and hurry off. And through the Greeks and Ilians they rapt The whirring chariot. Chapman. From Oxford I was rapt by my nephew, Sir Edmund Bacon, to Redgrove. Sir H. Wotton.

That which is snatched away. [Obs.] Where now are all my hopes O, never more. Shall they revive! nor death her rapes restore. Sandys.

imp. & p. p. of Rap, to snatch away.

imp. & p. p. of Rap, to snatch away.

To seize and carry away by violence; to snatch by force. These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin Will quicken, and accuse thee. Shak. This hand shall ravish thy pretended right. Dryden.

To take away by violence or by stealth; to snatch away; to rob; to despoil; to bereave. [Archaic]. "To reave his life." Spenser. He golden apples raft of the dragon. Chaucer. By privy stratagem my life at home. Chapman. To reave the orphan of his patrimony. Shak. The heaven caught and reft him of his tongue. Tennyson.…

the return of as a right; to attempt to recover possession of. A tract of land [Holland] snatched from an element perpetually reclaiming its prior occupancy. W. Coxe.

ly rend the kingdom from thee. 1 Kings xi. 11. To rap and rend. See under Rap, v. t., to snatch.