Note: Usurp is applied to seizure and use of office, functions, powers, rights, etc.; it is not applied to common dispossession of private property.
Syn.
— To arrogate; assume; appropriate.
USURP
U*surp", v. i.
Defn: To commit forcible seizure of place, power, functions, or the like, without right; to commit unjust encroachments; to be, or act as, a usurper. The parish churches on which the Presbyterians and fanatics had usurped. Evelyn. And now the Spirits of the Mind Are busy with poor Peter Bell; Upon the rights of visual sense Usurping, with a prevalence More terrible than magic spell. Wordsworth.
USURPANT
U*surp"ant, a. Etym: [L. usurpans, p. pr.]
Defn: Usurping; encroaching. [Obs.] Gauden.
USURPATION U`sur*pa"tion, n. Etym: [L. usurpatio making use, usurpation: cf. F. usurpation.]
1. The act of usurping, or of seizing and enjoying; an authorized, arbitrary assumption and exercise of power, especially an infringing on the rights of others; specifically, the illegal seizure of sovereign power; — commonly used with of, also used with on or upon; as, the usurpation of a throne; the usurpation of the supreme power.
He contrived their destruction, with the usurpation of the regal
dignity upon him. Sir T. More.
A law [of a State] which is a usurpation upon the general government.
O. Ellsworth.
Manifest usurpation on the rights of other States. D. Webster.
Note: Usurpation, in a peculiar sense, formerly denoted the absolute ouster and dispossession of the patron of a church, by a stranger presenting a clerk to a vacant benefice, who us thereupon admitted and instituted.