Dictionary entry

Usurp (2)

Webster's Dictionary 1913

U‐surp″, v. i. To commit forcible seizure of place, power, functions, or the like, without right; to commit unjust encroachments; to be, or act as, a usurper.

The parish churches on which the Presbyterians and fanatics had usurped. Evelyn.

And now the Spirits of the Mind

Are busy with poor Peter Bell;

Upon the rights of visual sense

Usurping, with a prevalence

More terrible than magic spell. Wordsworth.