spoil.
To strip (someone who has been killed or defeated) of arms or armour.
Meaning & usage
To strip (someone who has been killed or defeated) of arms or armour.
To strip or deprive (someone) of possessions; to rob, despoil.
To plunder, pillage (a city, country etc.).
To carry off (goods) by force; to steal.
To ruin; to damage in such a way as to make undesirable or unusable.
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.
Make sure you put the milk back in the fridge; otherwise it will spoil.
To render (a ballot) invalid by deliberately defacing.
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).
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Latin spolium Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin spoliāre Old French espoillierbor. Middle English spoilen English spoil From Middle English spoilen, spuylen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, espollier, espuler, from Latin spoliō, spoliāre (“pillage, ruin, spoil”).
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.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Latin spolium Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin spoliāre Old French espoillierbor. Middle English spoilen English spoil From Middle English spoilen, spuylen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, espollier, espuler, from Latin spoliō, spoliāre (“pillage, ruin, spoil”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.