Ransom vs Extort - What's the difference?
ransom | extort |
Money paid for the freeing of a hostage.
* 1674 , , Paradise Lost , Book XII:
* Sir J. Davies
* 2010 , Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad :
The release of a captive, or of captured property, by payment of a consideration.
(historical, legal, UK) A sum paid for the pardon of some great offence and the discharge of the offender; also, a fine paid in lieu of corporal punishment.
To deliver, especially in context of sin or relevant penalties.
To pay a price to set someone free from captivity or punishment.
To exact a ransom for, or a payment on.
To wrest from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity; to wrench away (from); to tear away; to wring (from); to exact; as, to extort contributions from the vanquished; to extort confessions of guilt; to extort a promise; to extort payment of a debt.
(legal) To obtain by means of the offense of extortion.
(transitive, and, intransitive, medicine, ophthalmology) To twist outwards.
As verbs the difference between ransom and extort
is that ransom is to deliver, especially in context of sin or relevant penalties while extort is to wrest from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity; to wrench away (from); to tear away; to wring (from); to exact; as, to extort contributions from the vanquished; to extort confessions of guilt; to extort a promise; to extort payment of a debt.As a noun ransom
is money paid for the freeing of a hostage.ransom
English
(wikipedia ransom)Noun
(en-noun)- They were held for two million dollars ransom .
- They were held to ransom .
- Thy ransom paid, which man from death redeems.
- His captivity in Austria, and the heavy ransom he paid for his liberty.
- As rich as was the ransom Priam paid for Hektor, Hermes says, his remaining sons at Troy “'would give three times as much ransom / for you, who are alive, were Atreus' son Agamemnon / to recognize you.'”
- prisoners hopeless of ransom
- (Dryden)
- (Blackstone)
Usage notes
* (term) is much more common in the US, (to) in the UK.Derived terms
* king's ransomVerb
- to ransom prisoners from an enemy
- Such lands as he had rule of he ransomed them so grievously, and would tax the men two or three times in a year. — Berners.
