from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- transitive v. To impair the value or quality of.
- transitive v. To damage irreparably; ruin.
- transitive v. To impair the completeness, perfection, or unity of; flaw grievously: spoiled the party.
- transitive v. To do harm to the character, nature, or attitude of by oversolicitude, overindulgence, or excessive praise. See Synonyms at pamper.
- transitive v. Archaic To plunder; despoil.
- transitive v. Archaic To take by force.
- intransitive v. To become unfit for use or consumption, as from decay. Used especially of perishables, such as food. See Synonyms at decay.
- intransitive v. To pillage.
- n. Goods or property seized from a victim after a conflict, especially after a military victory.
- n. Incidental benefits reaped by a winner, especially political patronage enjoyed by a successful party or candidate.
- n. An object of plunder; prey.
- n. Refuse material removed from an excavation.
- n. Archaic The act of plundering; spoliation.
- spoil for To be eager for: spoiling for a fight.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. To reveal the ending of (a story etc.); to ruin (a surprise) by exposing it ahead of time.
- n. Plunder taken from an enemy or victim.
- n. Material (such as rock or earth) removed in the course of an excavation, or in mining or dredging. Tailings.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. That which is taken from another by violence; especially, the plunder taken from an enemy; pillage; booty.
- n. Public offices and their emoluments regarded as the peculiar property of a successful party or faction, to be bestowed for its own advantage; -- commonly in the plural.
- n. That which is gained by strength or effort.
- n. The act or practice of plundering; robbery; waste.
- n. Corruption; cause of corruption.
- n. The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal.
- intransitive v. To practice plunder or robbery.
- intransitive v. To lose the valuable qualities; to be corrupted; to decay.
- transitive v. To plunder; to strip by violence; to pillage; to rob; -- with of before the name of the thing taken.
- transitive v. To seize by violence; to take by force; to plunder.
- transitive v. To cause to decay and perish; to corrupt; to vitiate; to mar.
- transitive v. To render useless by injury; to injure fatally; to ruin; to destroy
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To strip with violence; rob; pillage; plunder; despoil: with of before the thing taken.
- To seize or take by force; carry off as booty.
- To destroy; ruin; injure; mar; impair; render useless, or less valuable, potent, or the like; seriously impair the quality, value, soundness, beauty, usefulness, pleasantness, etc., of: as, to spoil a thing in the making; to spoil one's chances of promotion; to spoil the fun.
- To injure, vitiate, or impair in any way; especially, as applied to persons, to vitiate or impair in character or disposition; render less filial, obedient, affectionate, mannerly, modest, contented, or the like: as, to spare the rod and spoil the child; to spoil one with flattery.
- To cut up; carve: as, to spoil a hen.
- To engage in plunder and robbery; pillage; rob.
- To decay; become tainted or unsavory; lose freshness: as, fruit and fish soon spoil in warm weather.
- n. Arms and armor stripped from a defeated enemy; the plunder taken from an enemy in war; booty; loot; hence, that which is seized or falls to one after any struggle; specifically, in recent use, the patronage and emoluments of office, considered as a reward for zeal or service rendered in a struggle of parties: frequently in the plural: as, the spoils of capture; to the victor belong the spoils; the spoils of office; party spoils.
- n. The act of plundering, pillaging, or despoiling; the act of spoliation; pillage; robbery.
- n. Injury; damage; waste; havoc; destruction.
- n. An object of pillage or spoliation; a thing to be preyed upon; a prey.
- n. Waste material, as that obtained in mining, quarrying, excavating canals, making railway cuttings, etc. Compare spoil-bank.
- n. The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal.
- n. In spoil-five, a drawn game.
- n. Synonyms Plunder, Booty, etc. See pillage, n.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- v. hinder or prevent (the efforts, plans, or desires) of
- v. treat with excessive indulgence
- v. make a mess of, destroy or ruin
- v. alter from the original
- v. destroy and strip of its possession
- v. make imperfect
- v. become unfit for consumption or use
- n. the act of spoiling something by causing damage to it
- n. the act of stripping and taking by force
- v. have a strong desire or urge to do something
- n. (usually plural) valuables taken by violence (especially in war)
The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims.
What a ridiculous question would this be to him, who knows that in what we call spoil, he pursues the rational purposes of his own art; that to the excellence of the metal, he may also add the curiousness of the figure?
At issue was the massive amount of rock left over from the mountaintop-removal process, known as spoil, that is dumped into adjoining valleys, clogging up streams.
Persians to the rout; wherefore all the spoil is thine.
'Don't think any one will see it there,' he said, as he cut the candle down a trifle and lit it cautiously with a sputtering sulphur match, part of the spoil from the Turkish sentry.
The word spoil commonly means now, to corrupt, injure, or destroy.
The conditions of the covenant have been violated by the reservation of spoil from the doomed city; wickedness, emphatically called folly, has been committed in Israel (Ps 14: 1), and dissimulation, with other aggravations of the crime, continues to be practised.
I am well content with my estates, and need no foot of English land, no share in English spoil I must fight for my liege lord as long as fighting goes on, but that over I hope to return here and live in peace.
You need to learn that your girlfriend is an enabling idiot who has no idea what the word spoil actually means.
Where the 1979 regulations required haulage and placement of the rock and soil in compacted, constructed, engineered fills, OSM weakened the rules to allow end-dumping and wing-dumping from the mine bench of excessive amounts of mine "spoil" -- the soil and rock removed from above coal seams, into headwater streams.