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Definitions

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

The skull seemed to grimace in defiance, daring a stranger to despoil the royal treasures.

From "The Book of Three" by Lloyd Alexander

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

History's biggest oil spill despoils the French shoreline Like a grotesque, hook-shaped inkblot, the oil spread menacingly across the water.

From Time Magazine Archive

So man gone mad, despoils the gentle earth And wages war on beauty and on good.

From The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army by Vandercook, Margaret

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

Playing the last days of Romanian communism as frenzied farce, Lucian Pintilie’s “The Oak” is set in a world so despoiled a Hieronymus Bosch landscape might seem bucolic by comparison.

From New York Times Apr. 25, 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

In presence of this despoiled old trunk, majestic with memories, we felt an honest awe and longed to give it adequate salute.

From Spanish Highways and Byways by Bates, Katharine Lee

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

From Seattle Times Dec. 7, 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

A global explosion of disposable plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is increasing carbon emissions, despoiling the world's oceans, harming wildlife and contaminating the food chain.

From Reuters Feb. 18, 2022

The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs.

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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