What's the difference between confiscate and seize?

Confiscate


Definition:

  • (a.) Seized and appropriated by the government to the public use; forfeited.
  • (v. t. ) To seize as forfeited to the public treasury; to appropriate to the public use.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It wants courts to be able to ban them from driving, to confiscate their passport, or even impose a curfew.
  • (2) Politicians know that: they usually do not campaign on proposals to confiscate high incomes and pad low incomes.
  • (3) The present catamnestic study covers 100 petitioners, who either applied for the first time for a driving licence or for readmission to traffic after confiscation of their license by the police.
  • (4) But it is impossible to do so; police confiscated the documents of the company that handled his affairs.
  • (5) Meanwhile, an increase in labour inspectors has led to existing laws prohibiting the confiscation of passports being better enforced.
  • (6) The onset of smoking in the oldest male group in this rural area occurred in the first years after the war (first land confiscation) while in the group from 70 to 74 years of age it occurred in the years of compulsory crop-purchase system.
  • (7) The officials confiscated his laptop, phone, two memory sticks, two DVDs, a Sony games console, a smartwatch and a hard drive, the letter revealed.
  • (8) It gets up your nose.” Mahmood, 16, from Syria, said his shoes had been confiscated by police last Thursday night.
  • (9) Construction firms worth €550m belonging to building magnate Rosario Cascio and €700m worth of property and business concerns have been confiscated from Giuseppe Grigoli, whose retail and distribution group allegedly laundered Messina Denaro's cash.
  • (10) He added that the government should confiscate all other assault weapons and imprison those who insist on keeping guns.
  • (11) During a raid in 2013 on a village in Guangdong province nicknamed “China’s number one drug village”, police closed dozens of secret drug labs producing meth and ketamine and confiscated at least three tonnes of drugs worth about £142m.
  • (12) According to the source, security forces have been going around markets in recent months confiscating items suspected of being South Korean in origin, such as second hand clothes.
  • (13) In Germany a confiscated driving licence is only given back by the road traffic authorities to suspected alcoholics after a medico-psychological examination.
  • (14) Law enforcement efforts were intensified, supported by the criminalization of stimulant abuse with the enactment of the Stimulant Control Law in 1951 and subsequent amendments to it that were rigorously enforced, resulting in more arrests, indictments and relatively harsh penalties for stimulant offences, as well as an increase in the number and volume of confiscations.
  • (15) Agglomeration in the onset of smoking in two male age groups (60-64, 65-69) occurred at the time of the second land confiscation.
  • (16) In the summer of 1984, police in Pinellas County, Florida, confiscated six identically colored imported Asian skulls (in a shipping case) from a private citizen.
  • (17) "The fear is that records become a back door to registration and then, when the political moment is right, registration will turn to confiscation," said Robert Cottrol, a gun control expert at George Washington University.
  • (18) Detainees have described to their lawyers in phone calls and letters a hard regime at the base, with confiscations of many basic items, like toothbrushes.
  • (19) Instead of helping her, the authorities imposed a travel ban on her and my little brother and confiscated her passport at the request of her ex-husband, leaving her in limbo and exposing the shocking inequities of the UAE legal system.
  • (20) Criminal charges against him were dropped, but Mohamed was nevertheless suspended from school for three days and his clock was confiscated.

Seize


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To fall or rush upon suddenly and lay hold of; to gripe or grasp suddenly; to reach and grasp.
  • (v. t.) To take possession of by force.
  • (v. t.) To invade suddenly; to take sudden hold of; to come upon suddenly; as, a fever seizes a patient.
  • (v. t.) To take possession of by virtue of a warrant or other legal authority; as, the sheriff seized the debtor's goods.
  • (v. t.) To fasten; to fix.
  • (v. t.) To grap with the mind; to comprehend fully and distinctly; as, to seize an idea.
  • (v. t.) To bind or fasten together with a lashing of small stuff, as yarn or marline; as, to seize ropes.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Batson believes there is a “mood” that needs to be seized upon.
  • (2) George Osborne said the 146,000 fall in joblessness marked "another step on the road to full employment" but Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) seized on news that earnings were failing to keep pace with prices.
  • (3) Can somebody who is not a billionaire, who stands for working families, actually win an election into which billionaires are pouring millions of dollars?” Naming prominent and controversial rightwing donors, he said: “It is not just Hillary, it is the Koch brothers, it is Sheldon Adelson.” Stephanopoulos seized the moment, asking: “Are you lumping her in with them?” Choosing to refer to the 2010 supreme court decision that removed limits on corporate political donations, rather than address the question directly, Sanders replied: “What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this becomes a battle between billionaires.
  • (4) Among the dead were two young young officers, Major Mujahid Ali and Captain Usman, whose life stories the media seized upon, helped by the military's public relations machine.
  • (5) Remember, if he did seize group power and dispose of the Independent , he'd still be boss of the rest of INM: 200 or so papers and magazines around the world, dominant voices in Australasia, South Africa, India and Ireland itself, 100 million readers a week.
  • (6) Lieberman said: "[Amazon's] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.
  • (7) Generals who have mutinied have seized the capital of South Sudan's largest state, Jonglei, and its main oil-producing area, Unity State.
  • (8) The coroner also raised concerns that although the aim of the operation in which Duggan was killed was to take guns off the streets, little attempt was made to seize weapons believed to be held by Hutchinson-Foster.
  • (9) Employers seize the workers’ passports and the only body that can issue a permit for a worker to leave Qatar is the employer himself.
  • (10) Backlogs and staff shortages have long been seized upon by veterans groups lobbying for more resources, but it is the apparent cover-up of the scale of the problem that has transformed these latest complaints into a growing political problem for the White House.
  • (11) Social media has seized on the story, turning the Eastern Washington University’s professor of African studies into a figure vilified and mocked for cultural appropriation in the midst of fraught debates over transgender identity and police shootings of black people.
  • (12) A Yazidi lawmaker, a Kurdish security official and an Iraqi official from the nearby city of Sinjar gave similar accounts, saying Isis fighters had massacred scores of Yazidi men on Friday afternoon after seizing Kocho.
  • (13) "This is a formidable challenge, requiring step changes in the rate at which we improve our energy efficiency and in low-carbon innovation.The Carbon Trust's proposals recognise the need for us to be smarter in focusing our investments, including to help businesses seize the economic opportunities of the transition."
  • (14) The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since 1979, when a group of student protesters seized the US embassy in Tehran and took US officials hostage.
  • (15) The militants have also seized a huge chunk of territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border, and have declared a self-styled caliphate in the territory they control.
  • (16) But the Tories edited out a crucial final sentence in which Balls told BBC Radio Leeds on 9 January : “But I think we can be tougher and we should be and we will.” Labour seized on the Tory editing of the Balls interview to accuse the Tories of misleading people to defend their refusal to tackle tax avoidance.
  • (17) The Ukrainian president, Oleksandr Turchynov, had given pro-Russian locals in eastern Ukraine until Monday morning to give up their arms and the buildings they had seized, but instead a pro-Russian mob took over yet another government building in Horlivka that day.
  • (18) The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.
  • (19) In 2014, they seized on Osborne’s declaration of a “northern powerhouse” to promote One North, a plan for a £15bn network, dubbed HS3, between Lancashire and Yorkshire.
  • (20) The president’s supporters seized on the incident to plant seeds of confusion and false equivalency: if that Russia story was wrong, perhaps all of them are wrong?