abduction

/əbˈdʌkʃɪn/

/əbˈdʌkʃɪn/

Other forms: abductions

If you're the victim of an abduction, you've been carried away against your will — kidnapped. The word comes from Latin ab "away" + ducere "lead." Abduction is also when you move your arm or leg away from your midline.

"The Abduction from the Seraglio" is the English title of a famous Mozart opera, in which a nobleman tries to rescue his betrothed, who has been captured — abducted — by pirates and sold into a pasha's harem, or seraglio. At the end of the opera, the pasha is overwhelmed with mercy and frees everyone and sends them home. So there really isn’t an abduction from the seraglio; the pasha lets everybody go.

Definitions of abduction

1. noun

   the criminal act of capturing and carrying away by force a family member
   type of:

   capture, seizure

   the act of taking a person by force
2. noun

   (physiology) moving of a body part away from the central axis of the body
   type of:

   motility, motion, move, movement

   a change of position that does not entail a change of location