booty
    n 1: goods or money obtained illegally [syn: loot, booty,
         pillage, plunder, prize, swag, dirty money]

Booty \Boo"ty\, n. [Cf. Icel. b[=y]ti exchange, barter, Sw. byte
   barter, booty, Dan. bytte; akin to D. buit booty, G. beute,
   and fr. Icel. byta, Sw. byta, Dan. bytte, to distribute,
   exchange. The Scandinavian word was influenced in English by
   boot profit.]
   That which is seized by violence or obtained by robbery,
   especially collective spoil taken in war; plunder; pillage.
   --Milton.
   [1913 Webster]

   To play booty, to play dishonestly, with an intent to lose;
      to allow one's adversary to win at cards at first, in
      order to induce him to continue playing and victimize him
      afterwards. [Obs.] --L'Estrange.
      [1913 Webster]

Booty
   captives or cattle or objects of value taken in war. In Canaan
   all that breathed were to be destroyed (Deut. 20: 16). The
   "pictures and images" of the Canaanites were to be destroyed
   also (Num. 33:52). The law of booty as to its division is laid
   down in Num. 31:26-47. David afterwards introduced a regulation
   that the baggage-guard should share the booty equally with the
   soldiers engaged in battle. He also devoted of the spoils of war
   for the temple (1 Sam. 30:24-26; 2 Sam. 8:11; 1 Chr. 26:27).
   

BOOTY, war. The capture of personal property by a public enemy on land, in 
contradistinction to prize, which is a capture of such property by such an 
enemy, on the sea. 
     2. After booty has been in complete possession of the enemy for twenty-
four hours, it becomes absolutely his, without any right of postliminy in 
favor of the original owner, particularly when it has passed, bona fide, 
into the hands of a neutral. 1 Kent, Com. 110. 
     3. The right to the booty, Pothier says, belongs to the sovereign but 
sometimes the right of the sovereign, or the public, is transferred to the 
soldiers, to encourage them. Tr. du Droit de Propriete, part 1, c. 2, art. 
1, Sec. 2; Burl. Nat. and Pol. Law, vol. ii. part 4, o. 7, n. 12.