extort

present singular third person extorts · participle present extorting · participle past extorted · past extorted

1. transitiveTo 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 a promise

   4 more examples

   to extort contributions from the vanquished

   to extort confessions of guilt

   to extort payment of a debt

   The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!

   1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474

   Synonyms: wrench away, to tear away, to wring, to exact

2. transitivelawTo obtain by means of the offense of extortion.

   1 more example

   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).

   2017 January 19, Peter Bradshaw, “T2 Trainspotting review – choose a sequel that doesn't disappoint”, in the Guardian

3. intransitivetransitivemedicineTo twist outwards.

1. not comparableobsoleteExtorted; obtained by extortion.

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

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC