Definition
To extort is to obtain money, property, or some other thing of value from another person through compulsion — whether by physical force, threats, or the application of pressure so overwhelming that it overcomes the victim's free will. The word functions as the verb form of the noun extortion, and appears in both common and legal usage to describe the act of wresting a benefit from an unwilling person through illegitimate means.
In legal contexts, extort carries a specific technical weight: the compulsion need not be physical. Threats of future harm, exposure, prosecution, or reputational damage can constitute the operative pressure. The wrongfulness lies not only in the taking but in the method — obtaining something that would not have been freely given absent the coercive pressure applied.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To take or seize from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity; to obtain by means of the offense of extortion.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To wrest from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity; to wrench away; to wring from; to exact — as in extorting contributions from the vanquished, extorting confessions of guilt, extorting a promise, extorting payment of a debt.
The common and legal meanings are closer here than with many legal terms, but one gap is significant: in ordinary language, extort implies brute force or obvious menace. In law, the concept reaches conduct that is outwardly subtle — a public official who "extorts" by conditioning a lawful act on an unlawful payment may apply no physical pressure at all. The force is the force of office, not of muscle.
Common Confusion
EXTORT vs. COERCE: These terms are related but not interchangeable. Coercion is the broader category — any compulsion that overrides a person's will. Extortion is a specific application: compulsion directed at obtaining something of value. All extortion involves coercion; not all coercion is extortion.
EXTORT vs. DEFRAUD: Both involve obtaining property wrongfully. The distinction lies in the mechanism. To defraud is to obtain through deception — the victim gives willingly, but based on a false belief. To extort is to obtain through compulsion — the victim knows exactly what is happening but has no free choice. Historical sources sometimes blur this line, particularly in cases involving threats combined with misrepresentations.
EXTORT (common law) vs. EXTORT (statutory): At common law, extortion was almost exclusively an offense committed by public officials acting under color of office. Modern statutes — including the Hobbs Act in the federal context — dramatically expanded the term to reach private actors. Researchers reading historical materials should not assume the modern statutory definition applies to older sources.
Why It Matters in Research
The most important research trap with extort is the historical confinement of the term to official misconduct. In early common law sources, to extort was something only a public official could do — it was the corrupt use of official power to take what was not owed, or to take more than was owed, or to take before it was due. The Latin maxim preserved in Black's first edition captures this precisely: extortio est crimen quando quis colore officii extorquet quod non est debitum, vel supra debitum, vel ante tempus quod est debitum (extortion is a crime when one, under color of office, extorts what is not due, or more than is due, or before it is due). A researcher reading a 19th-century case using extort as a term of art is almost certainly reading about official corruption, not private threats.
The expansion to private actors is a 20th-century development, accelerated in the United States by federal organized crime legislation. The Hobbs Act (18 U.S.C. § 1951) is the central modern statutory reference. Researchers crossing between historical and contemporary sources must track which definition governs.
There is also a corpus distinction worth noting: extort as a verb appears less frequently in historical legal sources than its noun form extortion or the adjectival form extortionate. Searches on the verb alone may undercount relevant materials. Running parallel searches on extortion and extortionate will recover documents where the conceptual content is present but the verb form is not used.
The jurisdictional variation in what constitutes the operative threat is also significant. Some state statutes enumerate specific categories of threats that qualify; others use broader language. Researchers analyzing state-level materials should not assume that the federal Hobbs Act framework maps cleanly onto state doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define extort by reference to the same underlying principle — that the word's natural meaning encompasses not only physical compulsion but the force of motives applied to the will, which may be more overpowering than physical force. This is a notable acknowledgment that the legal concept reaches psychological compulsion. Both editions cite Commonwealth v. O'Brien, 12 Cush. (Mass.) 90, as authority for this formulation.
Both editions also preserve the Latin maxim from Coke, grounding the crime in official conduct. This dual framing — the broad natural meaning of the word, constrained in application by the official-color requirement — reflects the historical tension in the term. Black's definitions do not resolve that tension so much as document it.
What the historical dictionaries miss is the 20th-century statutory transformation. Neither edition anticipates the private-actor extortion that would become central to federal criminal law. Researchers relying on Black's historical entries alone will come away with an accurate picture of classical extortion doctrine and an incomplete picture of the modern offense.
Jurisdictional Note
In federal law, the Hobbs Act provides the dominant modern framework, covering both public official extortion and private extortion affecting interstate commerce. State definitions vary considerably: some states retain the older official-misconduct emphasis as a distinct offense (often called extortion under color of official right), while others have fully modernized to reach private conduct. The required nexus between the threat and the thing obtained also varies by jurisdiction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Extortion and Blackmail — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia [criminal_73]