subs. (American).—1. Household goods; personal effects; baggage. [M. D. plunder = household effects.]
d. 1834. COLERIDGE, Letters, 214. They [Americans] had mistaken the English language for baggage (which is called PLUNDER in America), and had stolen it.
1835. C. F. HOFFMAN, A Winter in the West, ii. 143. ‘Help yourself, stranger,’ added the landlord, ‘while I tote your PLUNDER into the other room.’
1846. W. T. THOMPSON, Major Jones’s Courtship, 165. Old Bosen was gwine to have more’n his match to pull us, they’d put in so much PLUNDER. We had two trunks and a banbox, etc.
1854. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Americans at Home, i. 117. One Sunday afternoon, two long ‘dug-outs,’ loaded with ‘PLUNDER’ (a term in the West for baggage, &c.), stopped at the cabin…. This was the family and property of Hank Harris.
2. (common).—Profit; MAKINGS (q.v.).
