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despoil

[dih-spoil] / dɪˈspɔɪl /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Today, that environmental perspective, that sense of how we humans continue to despoil our planet in an ever more fossil-fuelized and dangerous fashion, is simply inescapable.

From Salon Dec. 9, 2023

The slightest mistake would despoil the land and the waters, and America has seen plenty of such mistakes over the years.

From Seattle Times Feb. 5, 2023

That measure is opposed by members of the local Mura tribe, who say mining would despoil the natural habitat upon which they depend.

From Reuters Mar. 23, 2022

Using “ANWR” denies the refuge’s deeply wild character and serves those who would despoil this “last great wilderness.”

From Washington Post Jan. 7, 2022

Yet we have made the vow; and though no other human generation hath done other than despoil, perhaps we shall be the first.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

Unfortunately, your visit to Glacier NP was an example of exactly the kind of behavior that despoils and degrades our parks and wildernesses.

From New York Times Sep. 20, 2016

There are many benefits of not selling water in disposable bottles in national parks, including reducing trash at parks, carbon emissions and the litter that despoils our parks, landscape and waterways.

From Washington Post Jul. 24, 2015

Roger is jealous when Jane flirts with Manishewitz Jr.—“I thought you liked the crabs rangoon here!”—and despoils her new, Roger-free apartment accordingly.

From Slate May 14, 2012

Happily, the remedy to his dilemma comes to Nam in a dream: a blue-eyed American sergeant breaks into a bucolic toy community and despoils the place.

From Time Magazine Archive

The rose is gay, And passing-sweet the violet of the spring: Yet time despoils them, and they soon decay.

From Theocritus, translated into English Verse by Theocritus

Metaphors may have no place at a concentration camp, but it’s hard to look at this beautiful enclosed space and not see it, perversely, as the most despoiled of Edens.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 14, 2023

Morton, Douglas even went as far as arguing for standing for organizations to sue on behalf of nature when it was “about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers.”

From Washington Post Jan. 26, 2023

Too much of Seattle has been despoiled by the greed and power of developers.

From Seattle Times Feb. 18, 2022

The natural environment with which Native Americans had established a harmonious and symbiotic relationship, was similarly despoiled by the twin logic of expropriation and colonization that spread under the logic of manifest destiny.

From Scientific American Aug. 10, 2021

Simmonds, stooping over the despoiled border, presented an uncompromising back to her view.

From Imprudence by F.E. Mills Young

Plastic, along with other litter, is also despoiling the landscape and polluting our waterways.

From Seattle Times Dec. 7, 2023

The world is currently producing about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, with less than 10% of it being recycled, according to the UN Environment Programme, choking landfills and despoiling oceans.

From Reuters Nov. 12, 2023

I just wish I hadn’t let my fandom lead me into the fluorescent-lit land of plot despoiling.

From New York Times Dec. 10, 2022

Using strong words like decay, despoiling, vanishing, and violated, Johnson connects his argument to emotions—mostly fear—the audience would feel about such destruction of nature and values.

From Textbooks Dec. 21, 2021

“We are on the trail of a gang of international thieves who came to France for the purpose of despoiling our museums,” a police spokesman announced.

From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day




Vocabulary lists containing despoil


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