raid
Pluralraids
Pluralraids
- 1A sudden attack or entry made to arrest people, seize property, or take goods by force.
Federal agents conducted a raid on the suspected smuggling operation.
The dawn raid netted dozens of arrests and several crates of contraband.
Similarswoop, bust, search, sweep
Note
In law enforcement the word's familiar settings are the police raid and the early-morning raid. The target follows on or of (a raid on a warehouse, a police raid of a narcotics factory). The raiders can take of as well: a raid of contractors on the public treasury. That phrase is a reminder that plunder by the respectable counts too.
- 2A swift, hostile incursion made against enemy positions as part of a battle.
The cavalry's raid cut deep behind enemy lines before dawn.
Commanders ordered a raid to destroy the bridge and slow the advance.
Similarattack, incursion, foray
Note
Behind the military sense rides a horseman: Old English rād meant "a riding, an expedition on horseback," and the same word gave English road, while raid came to us through Scots. Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) pairs "the moonlight raid" with "the morning fight." Herbert Spencer in 1872 sets raids against conquest and occupation. A raid strikes and withdraws, holding no ground, which is what separates it from an invasion.
- 3To carry out a sudden attack on a place in order to make arrests, seize goods, or plunder.
Agents raided three warehouses in a single morning.
Armed units raid settlements to seize cattle and supplies.
Similarstorm, search, plunder, loot, sack
Note
The verb takes its target directly, with no preposition: police raid a gambling den and soldiers raid a village, where the noun needs on. One verb covers every hostile sense of the noun. It applies to troops and police, to mobsters stripping an art museum and to users raiding a Discord server.
- 4
- 5An attacking move or advance into the opposing side's territory during a game.
The player's raid earned three points before he was tackled.
A well-timed raid broke through the defense and led to a goal.
Note
Football commentary borrows the military word for forward runs. Jamie Lillywhite, writing for BBC Sport in 2011, credits Tottenham's Walker with "his raids from right-back." The word suits a defender who pushes forward and then has to recover. As in the battlefield sense, a raid goes in and comes out again rather than staying.
- 6A large group of players in an online game, formed from several parties working together to defeat a powerful enemy.
The guild organized a forty-player raid to clear the new dungeon.
Their raid wiped twice before downing the final boss.
Note
Gaming turns the action into the people performing it: a raid is the assembled group itself, built from several smaller parties. Players join a raid and speak of the raid wiping or succeeding, as they would of a team. The old idea of a band setting out together against a stronger foe survives from the military sense.
- 7To entice members, staff, or players away from a rival or another group.
The startup raided its rival, hiring away half the design team.
Wealthy clubs raid academies across the country for promising players.
Similarpoach
- 8An action a streamer takes near the end of a live broadcast to send their viewers to another streamer's channel, boosting that channel's audience.
Her closing raid flooded the newcomer's chat with friendly messages.
He thanked the streamer whose raid had doubled his audience overnight.
Note
Here the hostility has drained out of the word: a streaming raid is a gift of audience, not an attack. Twitch made it an official feature in 2017, and streamers speak of raiding as readily as of a raid. Keep it apart from the harassing server raid, where the arriving crowd comes to do harm. Who sends the crowd, and why, tells the two apart.
- 9A coordinated event where a group of users, often aided by bots and scripts, floods an online server to damage it or harass its members.
A coordinated raid filled the channel with thousands of junk messages.
After the raid, the admins locked the server to new members.
Note
Server moderators treat it as a hazard to defend against, and they talk of raid prevention tools and of bots that help block mass joins. The server is the victim and is said to be raided. The raiders are often a few people multiplied by scripts or generated accounts, so the crowd can be larger than the people behind it.
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Origin
From Scots raid, from Northern Middle English rade, from Old English rād ("a riding, an expedition on horseback, road"), the same root that gave English road. The older senses died out in Early Modern English but were revived in the northern form raid by Walter Scott in the early 19th century, and the sense of a swift police operation appeared later that century, perhaps influenced by French razzia.