defalcate

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   appropriate property entrusted to one's care fraudulently to one's own use

   I defalcated the watch that my cousin had lent to me.

First attested in the 1530s, in the sense “to lop off”; borrowed from Medieval Latin dēfalcātus, perfect passive participle of dēfalcō (“to cut or lop off”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from Latin dē (“off”) + falx (“sickle, scythe, pruning hook”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix).

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