Abactors

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of individuals who engage in the act of abducting or carrying away someone's property or livestock
2. Those who forcibly take or steal livestock from its rightful owner
3. A term referring to people involved in the unlawful seizure of goods, particularly animals

Etymology: "Abactors" is the plural of "abactor," a word for someone who drives off another person's livestock. Its Latin ancestor, "abigere," is a verb built from "ab," meaning "away from," and "agere," meaning "to drive." Put together, the verb meant to drive something away, and in Late Latin the agent form "abactor" came to name the cattle thief himself, the one who drove the herd off. The word's core image is therefore physical and specific: a person moving animals away from their pen or pasture by force. The "ag-" in its root is the same driving sense found in words like "agent" and "action," which both descend from the Latin verb for setting things in motion. In "abactor," that motion has been pointed at a single crime, the rustling of livestock.