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To extort is literally to wrench something out of someone. Extortion is a mainstay of organized crime. Just as the school bully extorts lunch money from the smaller kids in exchange for not beating them up, thugs extort "protection" money from business owners with threats of violence. But that's only one kind of extortion; a mobster might extort favors from a politician with threats of revealing some dark secret, just as you might extort a favor from a brother or sister by promising not to tell on them.
Examples of extort in a Sentence
Devan Patel, The Mercury News, 6 Nov. 2024
Typically, scammers will gain access to these accounts to help steal someone's identity, share posts about their scams or to extort a user into paying a ransom demand.
—Sam Sabin, Axios, 21 Oct. 2024
Private equity’s deep pockets, its willingness to extort patients, its heavy-handedness with telling doctors how to practice wouldn’t be possible — much less an advantage — in the absence of these larger upstream problems.
—Keren Landman, Vox, 3 Oct. 2024
Extortion claim The unproven allegation that Price tried to extort money comes from a problematic figure.
—East Bay Times Editorial, The Mercury News, 25 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for extort 
Dictionary Entries Near extort
Cite this Entry
“Extort.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extort. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
extort
verb
Legal Definition
extort
transitive verb
Latin extortus, past participle of extorquere to remove by twisting, obtain by force, from ex- out + torquere to twist
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