(v. t.) To subject to plunder and pillage; to despoil; to lay waste; to prey upon.
(v. i.) To take plunder or prey; to commit waste; as, the troops depredated on the country.
Example Sentences:
(1) Human depredation was not continuous as Desmodus located other hosts.
(2) There’s no question that wolves have eaten them from time to time — there were two confirmed kills here in 2014 — and though cattle depredation is decreasing, there’s no question that it will happen again in the future.
(3) This is the first report to document the use of famphur as an intentional means of killing wildlife thought to be depredating crops.
(4) Though The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association had been party to the discussions, they were furious about the outcome, saying that the new definition of chronic depredation was impossible to meet.
(5) The film shows the depredations of time, but also the lability of the past, its different meaning and value for both parties, and how, now that the couple are talking, the past can seem as unstable as the future.
(6) He could temporarily push out of his mind the horrors of the depredations of the planet being carried out by big business, or the dumbing-down of people's minds through the mass media, and he could relish the cultivation of what he himself termed "obsolete and obsolescent" varieties of apple, such as Royal Russett and Orleans Reinette.
(7) When the Arab spring uprising in Libya took shape in February, Britain and France , who had suffered more than most western countries from his depredations, saw a chance to settle with him.
(8) As elsewhere in the world, rodents are responsible for very considerable economic losses in tropical Africa because of their depredations on both growing crops and stored food products.
(9) Nigerian president meets schoolgirl who escaped Boko Haram Read more The disastrous economic and social legacy of Boko Haram’s depredations, and a linked, ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad basin, has brought calls for Buhari to adopt a more constructive approach extending beyond crude military suppression tactics.
(10) I am 77 and entitled to a free TV licence, but I am happy to keep paying for it if it will save the BBC from the depredations of this government.
(11) Several cattle had been taken by the pack, and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), which administers the state’s wolf plan, authorised the removal of two wolves for “chronic depredation”.
(12) It was not clear from the report whether Gove was explaining the horrific rise of neo-Nazism as primarily a response to the depredations of the EU.
(13) I don't doubt that Thurley has an aversion to patronising his paying guests – but really, patronising is precisely what the heritage industry is all about: preserving our ancient monuments against our own thoughtless depredations; organising a charitable and corporate funding structure for them because we cannot be trusted to pay for them out of the public purse; educating us as to their possible meaning; and, most of all, providing a seamless complex of car parks and road trains so we can visit them without having to animate our own overweight bodies.
(14) Much of what is happening now reflects the impact of decades of self-serving western policy in the Middle East and Africa, whether it be the fallout from the Iraq and Libya interventions, the depredations of climate change or the imposition on postcolonial developing countries of trade, aid and investment rules favouring richer nations and multinational corporations.
(15) The scale of current violence in Kurdish areas dwarfs Isis’s Turkish depredations.
(16) The state distributes compensation to ranchers for confirmed depredations.
(17) The National Campaign for the Arts heart sinks at the need to make yet more utilitarian arguments – but those are the only ones likely to stave off worse depredations.
(18) It has been rumoured for weeks that the Emiratis have been discreetly backing General Khalifa Haftar , the renegade Libyan general who presents himself as the only man who can save his chaotic country from the depredations of Islamists he dismisses as terrorists.
(19) No fiction set in the 14th century, for instance, has ever rivalled the portrayal in Game of Thrones of what, for a hapless peasantry, the ambitions of rival kings were liable to mean in practice: the depredations of écorcheurs ; rape and torture; the long, slow agonies of famine.
(20) Food chains are an essential link, for they associate animals to plants (in the case of depredators such as herbivores, fruit- and grain-eaters) and to other animals (in the case of predators).
Ransack
Definition:
(v. t.) To search thoroughly; to search every place or part of; as, to ransack a house.
(v. t.) To plunder; to pillage completely.
(v. t.) To violate; to ravish; to defiour.
(v. i.) To make a thorough search.
(n.) The act of ransacking, or state of being ransacked; pillage.
Example Sentences:
(1) Some have been threatened and assaulted, while others’ homes have been ransacked, their families living in constant fear.
(2) Gangs of armed men ransacked and burned homes of government supporters and residents from tribes sympathetic to the government.
(3) The attackers entered the buildings, ransacked each and set them on fire, but did not penetrate the safe rooms.
(4) They’ve just ransacked the house, it’s horrible, it’s terrible,” said Melissa Mill.
(5) While his political allegiances led to the ransacking of his office in 1965, following the coup d'etat the year before that brought the military to power under General Castelo Branco, Niemeyer remained a well known and popular figure among ordinary Brazilians, to whom he was always "Oscar", and evidently adored, although younger generations of Brazilian architects have inevitably felt hidden in his shadow.
(6) These were forerunners of today's "conscious hip-hop" (not for nothing is Gamble and Huff's catalogue among the most ransacked by rappers for samples).
(7) That all I could hear – BANG – and I thought, for fuck’s sake, I had a headache, Tel.” One of the men then clambered through the tiny hole to jemmy open 73 of the 550 safe deposit boxes, which they ransacked.
(8) He systematically ransacked Aboriginal burial grounds across at least two states.
(9) Earlier in the evening, a number of demonstrators attacked a branch of Starbucks, smashing its front windows and ransacking it before shattering the facade of a clothes shop.
(10) A Hague meeting with either Rouhani or Zarif could clear the way to restoring full diplomatic ties, which have not existed since the British embassy in Tehran was ransacked by a mob in November 2011.
(11) Residents of Kurhama village in eastern Kashmir said soldiers arrived trucks and entered dozens of homes, beat men and women, ransacked property and broke into shops.
(12) It attacked as “false” reports that offices in city hall had been ransacked by police as part of their search for documents.
(13) "Now that all the Muslim shops have been looted, ransacked and destroyed, prices have increased substantially."
(14) Hospitals were looted and non-governmental organisation offices ransacked as the insurgents declared Gao the capital of Azawad, or northern Mali .
(15) This would include delivery in schools and colleges, of course, but should embrace provision provided, for example, through study circles, which were organised by the TUC in the 1980s; the University of the Third Age and the opportunities that organisation has provided for retired people; and opportunities that have been provided for older people who have no qualifications to gain them through organisations like the Ransackers Association .
(16) The gang ransacked 73 boxes at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit after using a diamond-tipped drill to bore a hole into the vault wall over Easter weekend last year.
(17) A BBC correspondent in the city, Rana Jawad, tweeted: "In past 48 hrs many – if not majority – of apartments of Hay el Zohour compound on airport road have been ransacked acc to witnesses."
(18) The same article was successfully relied on by lawyers acting for Earl Daren Rodney, who was jailed for ransacking a hairdresser’s during the 2011 London riots.
(19) Four suspects wearing helmets and black clothing ransacked display cases inside the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel shortly after midnight and fled on two high-powered motorbikes.
(20) "They will ransack the village, but will probably be stopped at the city gates.