Word.ws English Dictionary

spoil the market

spoil the market verb: to set higher standards by overachieving, so others look inferior or unmotivated in comparison.

Verb

spoil the market (third-person singular simple present spoils the market, present participle spoiling the market, simple past and past participle spoiled the market)

  1. (Singapore, idiomatic, informal) To set higher standards by overachieving, so others look inferior or unmotivated in comparison.
    • Instead of working with each other, they bicker and say things like, if you do that, you’ll spoil the market.2006 September 22, Lydia Lim, Keith Lin, Ken Kwek, quoting Alvin Tan, The Straits Times, quoted in Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English, Singapore: Singapore Press...

Forms of spoil the market

third-person singular presentspoils the market
present participlespoiling the market
past participlespoiled the market
pastspoiled the market
alternative formspoil market

Questions about spoil the market

What does spoil the market mean?
Spoil the market means to set higher standards by overachieving, so others look inferior or unmotivated in comparison.
What part of speech is spoil the market?
Spoil the market is a verb.
What is the past tense of spoil the market?
The past tense of spoil the market is spoiled the market.

Words near spoil the market in the dictionary

  1. spoil heap
  2. spoil heaps
  3. spoil market
  4. spoil somebody rotten
  5. spoil someone rotten
  6. spoil the market
  7. spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar
  8. spoil the ship for a hap'orth of tar
  9. spoil'd
  10. spoil-paper
  11. spoil-papers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spoil the market (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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