spoilsman
Americannoun
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spoilsmen
plural
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a person who seeks or receives a share in political spoils.
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an advocate of the spoils system in politics.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of spoilsman
1835–45, spoils ( def. ) + -man
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.
See Examples For:
Barkley chatted calmly with Tennessee's truculent spoilsman, Kenneth McKellar, at the desk on his left.
From Time Magazine Archive
Scuttlebutt had it that he had been summoned in an effort to get him to stop Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar, the Senate's premier spoilsman, from trying to wreck TVA.
From Time Magazine Archive
But it was left for the Senate's master spoilsman, bulb-nosed Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, to launch a bill that was even more alarming to large chunks of official Washington.
From Time Magazine Archive
Up to the rostrum went a brief resolution from Tennessee's Kenneth McKellar, the premier spoilsman of the Senate.
From Time Magazine Archive
For all he was the furthest remove from a mere party contestant or spoilsman, neither his righteous pugnacity nor his human sympathy would allow him to “let politics alone.”
From Dr. Sevier by George Washington Cable
The spoilsmen got busy at killing the bill.
From Time Magazine Archive
Out of the fight he carried an abiding hatred of political spoilsmen, an abiding conviction that lasting reform can be achieved only when the electorate has been taught to understand and want it.
From Time Magazine Archive
But Governor Dewey got the men he wanted, and the spoilsmen in his party got the idea.
From Time Magazine Archive
Its leaders were party bosses and spoilsmen; in the burgeoning economy of the Reconstruction Era, many a robber baron found that a state legislature could be bought and, with it, a Senate seat.
From Time Magazine Archive
By this time the populace had invaded the palace and cursed with indignities unmentionable the marble halls, and the furnishings in general, and pillaged such portable property as pleased the individual fancies of the spoilsmen.
From Royal Palaces and Parks of France by Blanche McManus
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.
