extort

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   obtain by coercion or intimidation

   You extorted money from the executive by threatening to reveal their past to the company boss.

2. 2
   verb

   To take or seize from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity.

   To extort contributions from the vanquished.

3. 3
   verb

   To obtain by means of the offense of extortion.

   Weirdly, Renton doesn’t look too much older and the same also goes for Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who has exchanged heroin for cocaine and nowadays runs an escort-and-blackmail business, secretly videoing clients and extorting money, working with his female business partner, Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova).

4. 4
   adj

   extorted; obtained by extortion.

   Hauing great Lordships got and goodly farmes, Through strong oppression of his powre extort.

Simplified etymology

Extort dates from the early 16th century and comes from Latin torquere, “to twist,” with the sense “twist out of.”

Borrowed from Latin extortus, past participle of extorquere (“to twist or wrench out, to extort”); from ex (“out”) + -tort, from torqueō (“twist, turn”).

Topics

External links

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