Archaic or obsolete term for brigandage; robbery, banditry, or organized criminal activities typically carried out by groups of armed outlaws.
From brigat- (variant of brigand) plus -ry suffix indicating a practice or condition. This is an earlier or dialectal English formation paralleling brigandage, with -ry being a common suffix for forming nouns describing activities or conditions (like archery, thievery).
This word is so old and unused that it barely appears in modern English texts—it's a perfect example of how languages create multiple words for the same concept, then abandon most of them, leaving only the survivors like 'brigandage.'
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