despoil
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
- despoiler noun
- despoilment noun
- undespoiled adjective
Etymology
Origin of despoil
1175–1225; Middle English despoilen < Old French despoillier < Latin dēspoliāre to strip, rob, plunder, equivalent to dē- de- + spoliāre to plunder; spoil
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Miners hauled in hydraulic equipment to dig and dredge and strip the mountains, polluting the runoff so badly that in 1874, the flatlanders who depended on that water went to court to stop the despoiling.
From Los Angeles Times
“We are on the trail of a gang of international thieves who came to France for the purpose of despoiling our museums,” a police spokesman announced.
From Literature
Metaphors may have no place at a concentration camp, but it’s hard to look at this beautiful enclosed space and not see it, perversely, as the most despoiled of Edens.
From Los Angeles Times
Today, that environmental perspective, that sense of how we humans continue to despoil our planet in an ever more fossil-fuelized and dangerous fashion, is simply inescapable.
From Salon
Plastic, along with other litter, is also despoiling the landscape and polluting our waterways.
From Seattle Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
