the purloiner of another man's works. Amongst the Romans plagiarus was properly a person who bought, sold, or retained a freeman for a slave; and so was called because, by the Flavian law, such persons were condemned ad plagas, or to be whipped. A plagiarism, in the modern sense of the term, is one who borrows without acknowledgment, in literary composition, the thoughts or words of another, and the theft is styled plagiarism.