Raid
nounA sudden surprise attack or forced entry to seize something or to make arrests.
How to spell raid
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce raid
What does raid mean?
- nounA sudden surprise attack or forced entry to seize something or to make arrests.
- verbTo make a sudden attack on a place, or to enter it forcibly to seize people or property.
Raid in a sentence
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noun
The dawn raid on the warehouse recovered most of the stolen goods.
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verb
Officers planned to raid the building at first light.
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noun
The air raid left several streets in ruins.
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verb
Hungry children often raid the biscuit tin after school.
Where does raid come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Raid began as a Scots variant of the word that became modern 'road', both descending from the Old English noun rad, which literally meant 'a riding' or 'a journey on horseback'. In the rough border country between Scotland and England, that sense of a mounted journey narrowed to mean a sudden hostile incursion by armed riders who swept in, seized cattle or goods, and rode off again. The form 'raid' survived chiefly in Scotland and might have remained a regional term, but the novelist Sir Walter Scott popularised it in the early 1800s, after which it spread into general English. So 'road' and 'raid' are in effect the same old word that split in two, one keeping the calm sense of a way to travel and the other taking the violent sense of a swift attack. The short, plain spelling reflects its native Germanic roots rather than any Latin or French dressing.
How the word is built
- raid (from Old English rad: a riding, a mounted journey); a single unanalysable root
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