despoil
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /dɪˈspɔɪl/
Verb

despoil (despoils, present participle despoiling; past and past participle despoiled)

  1. (transitive) To plunder; to pillage; take spoil from.
    • 1849, Thomas Macaulay, History of England, Chapter 20:
      a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled
    • 2010, The Economist, 17 July, p.53:
      To dreamers in the West, Tibet is a Shangri-La despoiled by Chinese ruthlessness and rapacity.
  2. (transitive) To violently strip (someone), with indirect object of their possessions etc.; to rob.
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 9, 410-11:
      To intercept thy way, or send thee back / Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss.
    • 1849, Thomas Macaulay, History of England, Chapter 20:
      A law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled.
  3. (obsolete, transitive or reflexive) To strip (someone) of their clothes; to undress.
    • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:9.12?rgn=div2;view=fulltext chapter xij], in Le Morte Darthur, book VII:
      So syr Persants doughter dyd as her fader bad her / and soo she wente vnto syr Beaumayns bed / & pryuely she dispoylled her / & leid her doune by hym / & thenne he awoke & sawe her & asked her what she was
Related terms Translations Translations Noun

despoil (plural despoils)

  1. (obsolete) Plunder; spoliation.



This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
Offline English dictionary