Plagiarise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To copy someone else's work or ideas and present them as original without giving credit
2. The act of taking another person's writing or ideas and falsely presenting them as one's own achievement
3. Using another's intellectual property without acknowledgement as if it were created personally

Etymology: The surprising thing about this word is that its core meaning is literal: the Latin "plagiare" meant "to kidnap or abduct," and it was the ancestor of the modern sense of stealing someone's work. The link runs through "plagiarius," a Latin word for a kidnapper, which came to be applied to someone who stole another person's slaves or, by extension, their writings and ideas. The English path is a little longer. The noun "plagiary," meaning a person who steals another's writing, came first, and "plagiarise" was built from it by adding the suffix "-ise," which turns a noun into a verb. In other words, the verb is a derivative of a derivative, and its meaning of stealing intellectual property was built on a word that already described a thief of people.

Synonyms: copy, imitate, appropriate, lift, pirate

Antonyms: create, originate, invent, design, innovate