Usurp

usurp







Y

[yoo-surp, -zurp]



D



–verb (used with object) 

1. to seize and hold (a position, office, power, etc.) 

by 

force or without legal right: The pretender tried to usurp the throne.  



2. to use without authority or right; employ wrongfully: The magazine usurped copyrighted material.  



–verb (used without object)

3. to commit forcible or illegal seizure of an office, power, etc.; encroach. (侵佔)





　

Ferrara and his writers are also clever in placing the body snatching story in the middle of a pre-existing family crisis. Marti and her stepmother do not get along, and there is a sense in which the teenage girl already feels that her "real" mother has been usurped by an impostor, and her father subverted. Even her little brother is an enigma: She likes him, but resents having to share love and space with him. So if some of these people turn out to be pods, the psychological basis for her revulsion has already been established.





coddle

poach

They can't poach herring from our [waters].

a staff poached [from] other companies. 

plunder 

to plunder a [town]. 

to plunder the [public treasury].  

ravage

The marauders ravaged the [village]. 

All three are symbolically [annihilated] by Jared, who [ravages] her while grunting [sexist] and [racist] epithets in her ear.

ravish

While ravishing [her], he excuses himself by rationalizing that she'd [fare] worse on the streets.

The [soldiers] [killed] the few men there, and brutally ravished the [woman].

The [storehouse] door had been [broken], and all the supplies had been ravished [away].

Their playing of the double concerto simply ravished the [audience].

She looked [stunning], absolutely ravishing, when she made her entrance.   

cf. 

lavish Dissipate

buccaneer

Sham