noun, verb
noun [C,U] money that is paid to sb so that they will set free a person who is being kept as a prisoner by them:
The kidnappers demanded a ransom of ｣50000 from his family. * a ransom demand / note * ransom money * They are refusing to pay ransom for her release.
IDIOMS
hold sb to ransom
1 to keep sb as a prisoner and demand that other people pay you an amount of money before you set them free
2 (disapproving) to take action that puts sb in a very difficult situation in order to force them to do what you want
moreatKING
verb [VN] to pay money to sb so that they will set free the person that they are keeping as a prisoner:
The kidnapped children were all ransomed and returned home unharmed.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for ransom is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does ransom appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — ransom appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
