spoiling

Verb

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

1. (archaic, transitive) To strip (someone who has been killed or defeated) of arms or armour.
2. (archaic, transitive) To strip or deprive (someone) of possessions; to rob, despoil.
   • All that herde hym wer amased and sayde: ys nott this he that spoylled them whych called on this name in Jerusalem?1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Acts ix:[21]
3. (ambitransitive, archaic) To plunder, pillage (a city, country etc.).
   • Outlaws, which, lurking in woods, used to break forth to rob and spoil.1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […]...
4. (obsolete, transitive) To carry off (goods) by force; to steal.
   • No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Mark 3:27
5. (transitive) To ruin; to damage in such a way as to make undesirable or unusable.
   • All this sun spoils me for vacations in the far North.

   Synonyms:

   damage, destroy, sully, ruin

6. (transitive) To ruin the character of, by overindulgence; to coddle or pamper to excess.

   Synonyms:

   coddle, pamper, indulge, mollycoddle

See all 14 meanings of spoil