different between spoil vs desolate

English

Etymology

From Middle English spoilen, spuylen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, espollier, espuler, from Latin spoli?re, present active infinitive of spoli? (“pillage, ruin, spoil”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: spoil, IPA^(key): /sp??l/

• Rhymes: -??l

Verb

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

1. (transitive, archaic) To strip (someone who has been killed or defeated) of their arms or armour. [from 14th c.]
2. (transitive, archaic) To strip or deprive (someone) of their possessions; to rob, despoil. [from 14th c.]
   • 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Acts 9:21:

     All that herde hym wer amased and sayde: ys nott this he that spoylled them whych called on this name in Jerusalem?

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VII:

     To do her dye (quoth Vna) were despight, / And shame t'auenge so weake an enimy; / But spoile her of her scarlot robe, and let her fly.
3. (transitive, intransitive, archaic) To plunder, pillage (a city, country etc.). [from 14th c.]

   • Outlaws, which, lurking in woods, used to break forth to rob and spoil.

4. (transitive, obsolete) To carry off (goods) by force; to steal. [14th-19th c.]
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Mark 3.27,^[1]

     No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man.

   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, p. 35,^[2]

     They must likewise endeavour to be careful in looking after the rest of the Servants, that every one perform their duty in their several places, that they keep good hours in their up-rising and lying down, and that no Goods be either spoiled or embezelled.

   • 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 38,^[3]

     […] it was her own knife; little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago. But mama kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama had promised her that Betsey should not have it in her own hands.

5. (transitive) To ruin; to damage (something) in some way making it unfit for use. [from 16th c.]
   • 1650, Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living

     Spiritual pride […] spoils so many graces.

   • "I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve. […]"

   • 2011, ‘What the Arab papers say’, The Economist, 5 Aug 2011:

     ‘This is a great day for us. Let us not spoil it by saying the wrong thing, by promoting a culture of revenge, or by failing to treat the former president with respect.’

6. (transitive) To ruin the character of, by overindulgence; to coddle or pamper to excess. [from 17th c.]
7. (intransitive) Of food, to become bad, sour or rancid; to decay. [from 17th c.]

   Make sure you put the milk back in the fridge, otherwise it will spoil.

8. (transitive) To render (a ballot paper) invalid by deliberately defacing it. [from 19th c.]
   • 2003, David Nicoll, The Guardian, letter:

     Dr Jonathan Grant (Letters, April 22) feels the best way to show his disaffection with political parties over Iraq is to spoil his ballot paper.

9. (transitive) To reveal the ending or major events of (a story etc.); to ruin (a surprise) by exposing it ahead of time.
10. (aviation) To reduce the lift generated by an airplane or wing by deflecting air upwards, usually with a spoiler.

Synonyms

• (ruin): damage, destroy, ruin
• (coddle): coddle, pamper, indulge, mollycoddle

Related terms

• despoil

Translations

Noun

spoil (plural spoils)

1. (Also in plural: spoils) Plunder taken from an enemy or victim.
2. (uncountable) Material (such as rock or earth) removed in the course of an excavation, or in mining or dredging. Tailings. Such material could be utilised somewhere else.

Synonyms

• (plunder taken from an enemy or victim): See Thesaurus:booty
• (material moved): gangue, slag, tailings

Derived terms

• spoiler

Translations

See also

• spoilage
• spoils of war
• spoilsport
• spoilt
• too many cooks spoil the broth

References

• spoil at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• -polis, Polis, polis

English

Etymology

From Middle English desolate, from Latin d?s?l?tus, past participle of d?s?l?re (“to leave alone, make lonely, lay waste, desolate”), from s?lus (“alone”).

Pronunciation

• (adjective) IPA^(key): /?d?s?l?t/
• (verb) IPA^(key): /?d?s?le?t/

Adjective

desolate (comparative more desolate, superlative most desolate)

1. Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.

   a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house
2. Barren and lifeless.
3. Made unfit for habitation or use because of neglect, destruction etc.

   desolate altars

4. Dismal or dreary.
5. Sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.

   • voice of the poor and desolate

Translations

Verb

desolate (third-person singular simple present desolates, present participle desolating, simple past and past participle desolated)

1. To deprive of inhabitants.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Vicissitude of Things” in Essays, London: H. Herringman et al., 1691, p. 204,^[1]

     If you consider well of the People of the West-Indies, it is very probable, that they are a newer or younger People, than the People of the old World. And it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by Earthquakes, […] but rather, it was Desolated by a particular Deluge: For Earthquakes are seldom in those Parts.

   • 1717, John Dryden (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dublin: G. Risk et al., 1727, Volume I, Book I, p. 16,^[2]

     O Righteous Themis, if the Pow’rs above

     By Pray’rs are bent to pity, and to love;

     If humane Miseries can move their Mind;

     If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;

     Tell how we may restore, by second birth,

     Mankind, and people desolated Earth.

   • 1891, Charles Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1, p. 23,^[3]

     York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to estimate its ordinary population […]

2. To devastate or lay waste somewhere.
   • 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 2nd edition, 1809, Volume I, Book 3, p. 118,^[4]

     Then Moath pointed where a cloud

     Of Locusts, from the desolated fields

     Of Syria, wing’d their way.

   • 1905, H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 2, § 3,^[5]

     But in Utopia there will be wide stretches of cheerless or unhealthy or toilsome or dangerous land with never a household; there will be regions of mining and smelting, black with the smoke of furnaces and gashed and desolated by mines, with a sort of weird inhospitable grandeur of industrial desolation, and the men will come thither and work for a spell and return to civilisation again, washing and changing their attire in the swift gliding train.

3. To abandon or forsake something.
4. To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.
   • 1914, Arnold Bennett, The Author’s Craft, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Part II, p. 44,^[6]

     It is not altogether uncommon to hear a reader whose heart has been desolated by the poignancy of a narrative complain that the writer is unemotional.

   • 1948, Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, Chapter 36, p. 271,^[7]

     Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.

Related terms

• desolation

Translations

Further reading

• desolate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• desolate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• desolate at OneLook Dictionary Search

German

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -a?t?

Adjective

desolate

1. inflection of desolat:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Adjective

desolate f pl

1. feminine plural of desolato

Latin

Participle

d?s?l?te

1. vocative masculine singular of d?s?l?tus