Repossession is when a shop or a bank takes back a car, a sofa, or some other thing you were paying for month by month, because you cannot keep paying. You were allowed to use it while the money was still coming in; when the money stops, they have the right to come and take it. The verb is repossess; repossession is the name of that taking-back. It is a cold, official word — nobody is glad to hear it. In American English people even talk about the “repo man,” the person who comes for the car, sometimes at night. Houses sit a little to the side: a bank can take a house too, but the long legal fight that ends with the house being sold is often given a different name. Repossession is the simpler idea: they take the thing back because the payments stopped. They are not stealing. The right was written into the plan when you started paying. People stretch the word a little for any “they came and took it,” but the home of the word is unpaid cars, furniture, and goods.