capture

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• transitive verb To take captive, as by force or craft; seize.
• transitive verb To gain possession or control of, as in a game or contest.
• transitive verb To attract and hold.
• transitive verb Astronomy To attract and pull (a celestial body) into orbit by gravitation.
• transitive verb To succeed in preserving in lasting form.
• noun The act of catching, taking, or winning, as by force or skill.
• noun One that has been seized, caught, or won; a catch or prize.
• noun Astronomy The process by which a massive body, such as a star or planet, draws and holds another body in gravitational orbit.
• noun Physics The phenomenon in which an atom or a nucleus absorbs a subatomic particle, often with the subsequent emission of radiation.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of taking or seizing; seizure; arrest: as, the capture of an enemy, of a ship, or of booty, by force, surprise, or stratagem; the capture of a criminal.
• noun The thing taken; a prize.
• In physical geography, to divert part of (a river) to a new course: said of the action of a stream that erodes its valley headward into the basin of another river and thus captures or diverts the upper waters of the latter to its own course.
• noun In physical geography, the process by which a stream, lengthening its valley by head-ward erosion and thus encroaching upon a neighboring drainage-basin of greater altitude, eventually taps another stream, whose upper waters are thus diverted and whose lower waters are left ‘beheaded’: said also of glaciers.
• To take or seize by force, surprise, or stratagem, as an enemy or his property; take captive; make a prize or prisoner of: as, to capture a vessel or a fortress; to capture prisoners.
• To win by ingenuity or skill against resistance or competition: as, to capture a prize for marksmanship.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To seize or take possession of by force, surprise, or stratagem; to overcome and hold; to secure by effort.
• transitive verb to record or make a lasting representation of (sound or images).
• transitive verb (Games) to take control of, or remove from play.
• transitive verb to exert a strong psychological influence on.
• transitive verb (Computers) to record (data) in a computer-readable form.
• noun The act of seizing by force, or getting possession of by superior power or by stratagem.
• noun The securing of an object of strife or desire, as by the power of some attraction.
• noun The thing taken by force, surprise, or stratagem; a prize; prey.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An act of capturing.
• noun Something that has been captured; a captive.
• verb To take control of.
• verb To store (as in sounds or image) for later revisitation.
• verb To reproduce convincingly.
• verb To remove or take control of an opponent’s piece in a game (e.g., chess, go, checkers).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of forcibly dispossessing an owner of property
• verb succeed in representing or expressing something intangible
• verb bring about the capture of an elementary particle or celestial body and causing it enter a new orbit
• verb attract; cause to be enamored
• noun any process in which an atomic or nuclear system acquires an additional particle
• noun a process whereby a star or planet holds an object in its gravitational field
• verb capture as if by hunting, snaring, or trapping
• noun the removal of an opponent's piece from the chess board
• noun the act of taking of a person by force
• verb take possession of by force, as after an invasion
• verb succeed in catching or seizing, especially after a chase