as in to plunder
to search through with the intent of committing robbery
the burglars despoiled the art museum in search of treasures they thought they could sell to a fence
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of despoil
The monument, situated along the Arizona Strip, aims to protect the Grand Canyon from more uranium mining, which Native Americans said would despoil many sacred ancestral sites, leach into aquifers and threaten water supplies.
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Mark Eddington, The Salt Lake Tribune, 8 Aug. 2023
In stark contrast to the sensible environmental policies of his Republican predecessors, Watt’s policy enthusiasms included drilling, clear-cutting, despoiling public lands, and shredding environmental regulations.
—Liza Featherstone, The New Republic, 16 June 2023
This urge to despoil images of the unpopular goes a long way toward explaining why so many statues of Nero lost their heads, said Eric R. Varner, professor of classics and art history at Emory University.
—Graham Bowley, New York Times, 12 June 2023
Growth in Africa must be clean, both in terms of generating energy and not despoiling the continent’s landscape and natural resources.
—Jack A. Goldstone, Foreign Affairs, 18 May 2023
See All Example Sentences for despoil
Recent Examples of Synonyms for despoil
Verb
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French buccaneers spent much of the seventeenth century hiding and plundering along the northwest coast of Hispaniola, eventually realizing more money could be made farming tobacco and sugar.—
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Lowell plunders an emerald out of a wrecked ship, starts a fistfight with a local ruler, nearly dies when a boa constrictor wraps itself around her neck, and is wounded by an alligator.—
Verb
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In a landscape of sequels and overly pillaged IP, the Stranger Things finale is finite and close-ended, the credits rolling once and for all.—
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Certainly, its portrait of a futuristic society dominated by raping, pillaging youth gangs speaking a bizarre Russian-English hybrid slang struck a few different nerves — as did its tale of one teenage sociopath’s questionable reprogramming back into society after a stint in prison.—
Verb
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Philly flashbacks There was no shortage of hard feelings (and maybe some sour grapes) when the 49ers lost 31-7 in the NFC Championship Game following the 2022 season when Haason Reddick sacked Purdy and tore the UCL in his right elbow.—
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Miami punts The Hurricanes once again got past midfield, but Carson Beck was then sacked on back-to-back plays to force a Miami punt.—
Verb
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For months, mausoleums in the graveyard, some more than a hundred years old, were being looted in the dead of night, police said.—
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Dozens of people, mostly in Minnesota’s substantial Somali population, have been charged with looting the program by setting up companies that billed the state for supplying food that was never delivered.—
Cite this Entry
“Despoil.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/despoil. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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