spirit away

present singular third person spirits away · participle present spiriting away · participle past spirited away · past spirited away

1. transitiveTo remove without anyone's noticing.

   The paintings were spirited away under cover of darkness.

   1 more example

   Twice my tent was turned inside out in my absence, once my clothes were spirited away while I was bathing, and the night before we broke up the camp I was within an ace of being murdered.

   1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC

2. transitiveTo carry off through the agency of a spirit or through some magical means.

   "But far up in the country, in the mountain districts, we still often hear of fairies having been seen, of their spiriting people away into the mountains, and such like.

   1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 156