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⚖️ Property seizure 🚫 Losing rights
forfeiture

forfeiture

10 8.0
Losing property, such as money or a house, as a penalty for doing something wrong
  • noun
  • /ˈfɔrˌfɪtʃər/
  • Specialized
translation icon : confiscación
  • Penalties for a convicted executive can include forfeiture of profits, fines, and a prison sentence.
  • a forfeiture or fine
  • forfeiture of tax
  • civil forfeiture

Consequently, none of his subjects by any pretense of forfeiture can be freed from his suggest, from his subjection.

Examples

  • The offense may be punished by imprisonment for up to five years, a fine, forfeiture, or a prohibition from undertaking certain activities.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The offender faces imprisonment from one to five years, prohibition of certain activities, a fine, or forfeiture.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Such an action also resulted in forfeiture of pay.

    Academic text (2007)

  • While such forfeiture laws have provided prosecutors with a powerful weapon, they also have created problems.

    Academic text (1995)

  • As an innocent owner whose property had been taken, she challenged the forfeiture.

    Academic text (2009)

  • Refusal to abide by all the Detroit City Ordinances will result in immediate arrest and forfeiture.

    Straight Outta Compton (2015)

  • Departure from the Lutheran faith was punishable by banishment from the realm and forfeiture of all rights of inheritance.

    Academic text (1998)

  • In 1999, a New York District Court found that the CPIA required the forfeiture of a Mexican document from 1778, stolen from the National Archives in Mexico City.

    Academic text (2016)

  • By 1934, most of the allotments had been lost through tax forfeitures and fraud, and Leech Lake now retains roughly 5 percent of the reservation's original 670,000 acres.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The penalty for violating the contract was the forfeiture of his rights to the property.

Synonyms

confiscation
vsforfeiture
15 5.4

An authority takes someone's property as a punishment

is a broader loss by penalty or failed obligation not only official taking
forfeit
vsforfeiture
12 5.5

A thing you lose or must give up as a penalty

is the process or result of that loss rather than the lost item
dispossession
vsforfeiture
  • Specialized
3 8.2

A legal loss of land, property or other things someone owns

is loss specifically as a penalty for wrongdoing or unmet obligation

Antonyms

preservation
90 3.8

Keeping things safe and in good condition, for example food or buildings

retention
23 4.2

Keeping something so you still have it

How Severe

seizure
  • Formal
71 6.1
forfeiture
  • Specialized
10 8.0
confiscation
15 5.4
penalty
487 2.5
reprimand
  • Formal
24 6.1

Surface Forms

forfeiture singular
forfeitures plural

Morphology

forfeiture = forfeit (transparent) = forfeit + ure

The noun is a regular nominalization of 'forfeit' with the suffix '-ure', denoting the act or result of losing, which is directly predictable from the base.

Etymology

Forfeiture comes from the verb forfeit, which means 'to lose something as a punishment'. Think of it like losing your deposit or a right because you broke a rule, and that image helps you remember the meaning.