plagiary

• plagiarie [16th-17th c.]

From Latin plagiārius (“kidnapper, plagiarist”), from plagium (“kidnapping”), probably from plaga (“a net, snare, trap”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpleɪdʒ(ɪ)əɹi/

plagiary (countable and uncountable, plural plagiaries)

1. (archaic) A plagiarist.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

2. (obsolete) A kidnapper.
3. The crime of literary theft; plagiarism.
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.6:

     Plagiarie had not its nativity with Printing, but began in times when thefts were difficult, and the paucity of Books scarce wanted that Invention.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)

• plagiarism
• plagiarist

plagiary (not comparable)

1. (archaic) plagiarizing
   • 1863, The Home and Foreign Review (issue 5, page 87)

     The busy bee is his classical device, and the simile confesses and justifies his plundering propensities; but the plagiary poet who steals ideas is represented by another insect, […]

• plagiary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• plagiary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.