spoil means plunder taken from an enemy or victim.
spoil is pronounced /spɔɪl/.
Why “spoil” is a great word
Plunder taken by force, or the act of rendering something unfit; to strip or diminish its inherent worth. Its lineage is direct: from Middle English spoilen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, from Latin spoliare ("to strip, plunder, rob"). Unlike "cultivate," which nurtures potential into fruit, or "bungle," which fails through clumsiness, to spoil is to actively strip value, to turn potential into dross. It is the milk curdling in the sun, the child warped by indulgence, the fresco scarred by vulgar graffiti—the quiet tragedy of a thing diminished by touch, as if all human contact carries a latent corruption.
Etymology
From Middle English spoilen, spuylen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, espollier, espuler, from Latin spoliō, spoliāre (“pillage, ruin, spoil”).
noun
- Plunder taken from an enemy or victim.
- The act of taking plunder from an enemy or victim; spoliation, pillage, rapine.
- Material (such as rock or earth) removed in the course of an excavation, or in mining or dredging. Tailings. Such material could be utilised somewhere else.
verb
- To strip (someone who has been killed or defeated) of arms or armour.
- To strip or deprive (someone) of possessions; to rob, despoil.e.g.“All that herde hym wer amased and sayde: ys nott this he that spoylled them whych called on this name in Jerusalem?” — 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Acts ix:[21]:
- To plunder, pillage (a city, country etc.).e.g.“Outlaws, which, lurking in woods, used to break forth to rob and spoil.” — 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Anc
- To carry off (goods) by force; to steal.e.g.“No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man.” — 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Mark 3:27:
- To ruin; to damage in such a way as to make undesirable or unusable.e.g.“All this sun spoils me for vacations in the far North.”
- To ruin the character of, by overindulgence; to coddle or pamper to excess.
- To go bad; to become sour or rancid; to decay.e.g.“Make sure you put the milk back in the fridge; otherwise it will spoil.”
- To render (a ballot) invalid by deliberately defacing.e.g.“Dr Jonathan Grant (Letters, April 22) feels the best way to show his disaffection with political parties over Iraq is to spoil his ballot paper.” — 2003, David Nicoll, The Guardian, letter:
- To prematurely reveal major events or the ending of (a story etc.); to ruin (a surprise) by exposing ahead of time as a spoiler.
- To reduce the lift generated by an airplane or wing by deflecting air upwards, usually with a spoiler.
- To be very eager (for something).e.g.“Senator Toombs who announced his readiness to whip Great Britain [...] has been spoiling for a fight ever since” — 1858, The Daily Exchange, Baltimore, Md., page 2:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.