spoil
Definitions
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The friends' picnic is spoiled by the rain -
WordNet 3.6
- v spoil alter from the original
- v spoil become unfit for consumption or use "the meat must be eaten before it spoils"
- v spoil make imperfect "nothing marred her beauty"
- v spoil destroy and strip of its possession "The soldiers raped the beautiful country"
- v spoil have a strong desire or urge to do something "She is itching to start the project","He is spoiling for a fight"
- v spoil make a mess of, destroy or ruin "I botched the dinner and we had to eat out","the pianist screwed up the difficult passage in the second movement"
- v spoil hinder or prevent (the efforts, plans, or desires) of "What ultimately frustrated every challenger was Ruth's amazing September surge","foil your opponent"
- v spoil treat with excessive indulgence "grandparents often pamper the children","Let's not mollycoddle our students!"
- n spoil the act of stripping and taking by force
- n spoil the act of spoiling something by causing damage to it "her spoiling my dress was deliberate"
- n spoil (usually plural) valuables taken by violence (especially in war) "to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy"
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Additional illustrations & photos:
The Spoils of War 105
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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Interesting fact: Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.
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- Spoil Corruption; cause of corruption. "Villainous company hath been the spoil of me."
- Spoil Public offices and their emoluments regarded as the peculiar property of a successful party or faction, to be bestowed for its own advantage; -- commonly in the plural; as, to the victor belong the spoils . "From a principle of gratitude I adhered to the coalition; my vote was counted in the day of battle, but I was overlooked in the division of the spoil ."
- Spoil That which is gained by strength or effort. "Each science and each art his spoil ."
- Spoil That which is taken from another by violence; especially, the plunder taken from an enemy; pillage; booty. "Gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils ." - Spoil The act or practice of plundering; robbery; waste. "The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils ." - Spoil The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal.
- Spoil To cause to decay and perish; to corrupt; to vitiate; to mar. "Spiritual pride spoils many graces."
- Spoil To lose the valuable qualities; to be corrupted; to decay; as, fruit will soon spoil in warm weather.
- Spoil To plunder; to strip by violence; to pillage; to rob; -- with of before the name of the thing taken; as, to spoil one of his goods or possessions. "Ye shall spoil the Egyptians.""My sons their old, unhappy sire despise, Spoiled of his kingdom, and deprived of eyes."
- Spoil To practice plunder or robbery. "Outlaws, which, lurking in woods, used to break forth to rob and spoil ."
- Spoil To render useless by injury; to injure fatally; to ruin; to destroy; as, to spoil paper; to have the crops spoiled by insects; to spoil the eyes by reading.
- Spoil To seize by violence; to take by force; to plunder. "No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man."
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
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Interesting fact: Wine is kept in tinted bottles because it will spoil if it's exposed to light.
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- n spoil Arms and armor stripped from a defeated enemy; the plunder taken from an enemy in war; booty; loot; hence, that which is seized or falls to one after any struggle; specifically, in recent use, the patronage and emoluments of office, considered as a reward for zeal or service rendered in a struggle of parties: frequently in the plural: as, the spoils of capture; to the victor belong the spoils; the spoils of office; party spoils.
- n spoil The act of plundering, pillaging, or despoiling; the act of spoliation; pillage; robbery.
- n spoil Injury; damage; waste; havoc; destruction.
- n spoil An object of pillage or spoliation; a thing to be preyed upon; a prey.
- n spoil Waste material, as that obtained in mining, quarrying, excavating canals, making railway cuttings, etc. Compare spoil-bank.
- n spoil The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal.
- n spoil In spoil-five, a drawn game.
- n spoil Synonyms Plunder, Booty, etc. See pillage, n.
- spoil To strip with violence; rob; pillage; plunder; despoil: with of before the thing taken.
- spoil To seize or take by force; carry off as booty.
- spoil To destroy; ruin; injure; mar; impair; render useless, or less valuable, potent, or the like; seriously impair the quality, value, soundness, beauty, usefulness, pleasantness, etc., of: as, to spoil a thing in the making; to spoil one's chances of promotion; to spoil the fun.
- spoil To injure, vitiate, or impair in any way; especially, as applied to persons, to vitiate or impair in character or disposition; render less filial, obedient, affectionate, mannerly, modest, contented, or the like: as, to spare the rod and spoil the child; to spoil one with flattery.
- spoil To cut up; carve: as, to spoil a hen.
- spoil To engage in plunder and robbery; pillage; rob.
- spoil To decay; become tainted or unsavory; lose freshness: as, fruit and fish soon spoil in warm weather.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
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Interesting fact: Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.
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- v.t Spoil spoil to take by force: to plunder
- v.i Spoil to practise robbery
- n Spoil prey, plunder: pillage: robbery
- v.t Spoil spoil to corrupt: to mar: to make useless
- v.i Spoil to decay: to become useless
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Quotations
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“A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.” -
“Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.” -
“Sarcasm spoils reproof.”
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“Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.” -
“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” -
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Idioms
Spare the rod and spoil the child - This means that if you don't discipline children, they will become spoilt.
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Spoil the ship for a ha'pworth of tar - (UK) If someone spoils the ship for a ha'pworth (halfpenny's worth) of tar, they spoil something completely by trying to make a small economy.
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Too many cooks spoil the broth - This means that where there are too many people trying to do something, they make a mess of it.
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Etymology
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
F. spolier, OF. espoillier, fr. L. spoliare, fr. spolium, spoil. Cf. Despoil Spoliation
Usage
In literature:
The youngest child always gets spoiled.
"A Little Girl in Old Boston" by Amanda Millie Douglas
And, "Anything on earth that you would do to that dress, Mrs. Worthington, would spoil it," said Miss Rosa, warmly.
"The Heart of Arethusa" by Francis Barton Fox
O Gad, you are quite spoiled.
"The Comedies of William Congreve Volume 1 [of 2]" by William Congreve
One's taste is spoiled by what he hears.
"Folkways" by William Graham Sumner
Mrs. Lamb was very angry when she saw that the peony was spoiled; and she took Kate by the arm, and shook her.
"Proud and Lazy" by Oliver Optic
We are hardly ever conscious of the moisture except when it falls as rain or snow and spoils our plans.
"Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10" by Charles Herbert Sylvester
But meanwhile everything might be spoiled.
"Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908" by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The name spoiled her for him, just as the Jameson mouth spoiled her son for him.
"Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922" by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Such treatment will mar, if not spoil, the attractiveness of it.
"Amateur Gardencraft" by Eben E. Rexford
It's the hemigrants that spoil this country.
"The Kangaroo Marines" by R. W. Campbell
This is a deposit to protect ourselves if you never return, or if you spoil the work.
"Patty's Success" by Carolyn Wells
That is the way to spoil him.
"Hopes and Fears scenes from the life of a spinster" by Charlotte M. Yonge
No one but a spoiled child would talk as you are talking.
"Vixen, Volume II." by M. E. Braddon
What had he, a British subject, to do with those Dagoes who spoil the profession?
"The Bill-Toppers" by Andre Castaigne
Oliver says I spoil her to death, but how can a baby of seven months be spoiled.
"Virginia" by Ellen Glasgow
Now I will spoil my pretty shoes!
"Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea" by Charles H. L. Johnston
Maubranne would have spoiled everything at the last minute.
"My Sword's My Fortune" by Herbert Hayens
The picture had some beauty that was not altogether spoiled by the telegraph wires, giant posts, and advertisement signs.
"Partners of the Out-Trail" by Harold Bindloss
The people have ever before them these warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit.
"Ireland as It Is" by Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
If we had waited for you, the dinner would have been spoiled.
"The Fairchild Family" by Mary Martha Sherwood
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In poetry:
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe -
Dear, though it spoil and break us!--need we care
What is to come?
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe -
Dear, though it spoil and break us!--need we care
What is to come?
"What Is To Come" by William Ernest Henley
Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know that she never knew why)
And did not understand!
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know that she never knew why)
And did not understand!
"The Vampire" by Rudyard Kipling
The champions had come from their fields of war,
Over the crests of the billows far,
They had brought back the spoils of a hundred shores,
Where the deep had foam'd to their flashing oars.
Over the crests of the billows far,
They had brought back the spoils of a hundred shores,
Where the deep had foam'd to their flashing oars.
"The Sicilian Captive" by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Yes, that's what I've come for, as all of us come;
When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb.
You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun;
I have told what I came for; my ditty is done.
When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb.
You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun;
I have told what I came for; my ditty is done.
"What I Have Come For" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Christ has th' usurping tyrant Death o'erthrown —
Christ's death has spoil'd, and made his arms his own —
Christ has devour'd the ghastly-visag'd king —
Christ has bereav'd Him of his pointed sting.
Christ's death has spoil'd, and made his arms his own —
Christ has devour'd the ghastly-visag'd king —
Christ has bereav'd Him of his pointed sting.
"Christ Is All In All" by Rees Prichard
She saw their birthright's warrior-crown
Of olden glory spoil'd,
The standard of their sires borne down,
The shield's bright blazon soil'd:
She met the tempest meekly brave,
Then turn'd o'erwearied to the grave.
Of olden glory spoil'd,
The standard of their sires borne down,
The shield's bright blazon soil'd:
She met the tempest meekly brave,
Then turn'd o'erwearied to the grave.
"The Queen Of Prussia's Tomb" by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
In news:
Grinch spoils serviceman 's return.
Grandma and Grandpa have always spoiled you.
Poor shrimping season won't spoil Beaufort Shrimp Festival.
Spoiling for a fight.
Silent bats spoiling Detroit's championship bid: World Series Insider.
They felt that The Post spoiled the surprise.
How to keep an open bottle of wine from spoiling , other tips.
All across this great land people love to spoil their pets.
I spoiled Santa for a classmate in third grade and have felt guilty about it ever since.
I was 8 the first—and only—time I spoiled Santa for a believer.
How often did kids spoil Santa for their classmates.
Are Too Many Cooks Spoiling the Broth in Libya.
Could Third Party Candidates Spoil the Obama, Romney Path to 270.
Drake's early exit shouldn't spoil brilliant season.
It's what most people have wanted to see since the first week of the season against Davenport Central, but it would be easy to get spoiled by a running game that continues to churn out yardage and touchdowns.
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In science:
In this case, the equivalence transformations which do not spoil the ansatz give exactly the general coordinate, U (1) and Weyl transformations.
Point particle in general background fields and generalized equivalence principle
One might think that the gauge dependence of the renormalization constants could spoil the above derivation of Eq. (14).
General Covariance in Quantum Gravity
Electromagnetic mass models are subcases, often spoiled by negative pressure.
Static charged perfect fluid spheres in general relativity
We need operators to be marginal in order not to spoil the conformal properties of the field theory.
Marginal Deformations of N=4 SYM and of its Supersymmetric Orbifold Descendants
In this case, the noise of the position sensor should be low enough, in order not to spoil the sensitivity of the antenna.
Feasibility of a magnetic suspension for second generation Gravitational Wave interferometers
In Fig. 6 we plot the degree distribution at N = 214 and β = 2.5, for G = 0 and 0.08 ( just before the transition to the crumpled phase), to show that the introduction of the interaction Hamiltonian does not spoil the scale free property.
Perturbing General Uncorrelated Networks
This is almost the same relationship as we found for the perturbative contributions (5.92), but it is spoiled by the log 2 term.
String Theory and the Vacuum Structure of Confining Gauge Theories
Obviously it does not in principal spoil the algebraic relation fulfilled by the Pauli matrices τi .
Basics of M-Theory
At asymptotic infinity, however, we would encounter severe problems since qxx is close to one at which point modifications can already be noticeable, spoiling the classical limit of the theory.
Quantum Riemannian Geometry and Black Holes
The key is that a Poisson point can be moved a little bit without spoiling the goodness of boxes [GHK2, Lemma 3.3].
Localization at low energies for attractive Poisson random Schr\"odinger operators
L5 we use. (Note that this only works because the log terms combined in this particular way.) Any additional finite counterterm such as √γRγ θ2 would spoil the vanishing of the o2 term so all the counterterms are specified uniquely by the requirement that the vev vanishes in the large mass limit.
Chiral Transition of N=4 Super Yang-Mills with Flavor on a 3-Sphere
As is seen from Lemma 3.1, our main task is to give good bounds for Px(τ > n), more precisely, to show that this quantity decays on the scale n− k 4 (k−1) (where some error of some small positive power of n would not spoil the proof ).
Ordered random walks
Corrections may lead to polynomial terms in τ in V (τ , θ) which may spoil the flatness, and possibly even spoil inflation itself.
Roulette Inflation with K\"ahler Moduli and their Axions
Another known problem where the perturbation theory is spoiled by DR is elastic manifolds in disordered media.
Long-range correlated random field and random anisotropy O(N) models: A functional renormalization group study
One must be careful when employing cutoff regularization schemes since these introduce an additional massive cutoff scale which may spoil chiral symmetry .
Introduction to Chiral Perturbation Theory
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