Took control of a vehicle (usually a plane, bus, or ship) by force; also means to take over or redirect something for your own use.
From American slang 'hijack,' possibly from 'high' and 'jack,' used by bootleggers during Prohibition (1920s) to steal alcohol trucks. The word became common in news around airplane seizures in the 1960s-70s.
The first hijackings in the 1920s were by bootleggers stealing alcohol trucks during Prohibition, but by the 1960s the word meant taking over planes! Today we use 'hijacked' metaphorically for things like 'my email was hijacked' or 'the conversation was hijacked.'
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