English

Verb

despoil ‎(third-person singular simple present despoils, present participle despoiling, simple past and past participle despoiled)

1. (transitive) To deprive for spoil; to take spoil from; to plunder; to rob; to pillage.
   • Macaulay

     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.
   • 1614, Sir Walter Raleigh, History of the World:

     The Earl of March, following the plain path which his father had trodden out, despoiled Henry the father, and Edward the son, both of their lives and kingdom.

   • 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, Ch.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, 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

Translations

Related terms

• despoiler
• despoilment
• despoliation
• spoliate
• spoliation

Noun

despoil ‎(plural despoils)

1. (obsolete) Plunder; spoliation.

References

• despoil in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• despoil in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Anagrams

• diploës
• dipoles
• elopids
• peloids
• spoiled