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ip by violence; to pillage; to rob; -- with of before the name of the thing taken; as, to spoil one of his goods or possession. "Ye shall spoil the Egyptians." Ex. iii. 22. My sons their old, unhappy sire despise, Spoiled of his kingdom, and deprived of eues. Pope.

Capable of being spoiled.

One who spoils; a plunderer; a pillager; a robber; a despoiler.

, if no player wins three of the five tricks possible on any deal, the game is said to be spoiled.

Wasteful; rapacious. [Poetic]

One who serves a cause or a party for a share of the spoils; in United States politics, one who makes or recognizes a demand for public office on the ground of partisan service; also, one who sanctions such a policy in appointments to the public service.

One who promises or distributes public offices and their emoluments as the price of services to a party or its leaders.

To deprive for spoil; to plunder; to rob; to pillage; to strip; to divest; -- usually followed by of. The clothed earth is then bare, Despoiled is the summer fair. Gower. A law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled. Macaulay. Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss. Milton.…

One who despoils.

Despoliation. [R.]

degradation; ruin. [Obs.] You might wrest the caduceus out of my hand to the adultery and spoil of nature. B. Jonson.

To spoil; to corrupt. Wright.

A thwarting an adversary in cribbage by spoiling his score; a balk.

To pollute by mixture or association; to spoil or corrupt; to blot; to stain. [Obs.] Spenser.

Booty; spoil. [Obs. or R.] Shak.

That which is seized by violence or obtained by robbery, especially collective spoil taken in war; plunder; pillage. Milton. To play booty, to play dishonestly, with an intent to lose; to allow one's adversary to win at cards at first, in order to induce him to continue playing and victimize him afterwards. [Obs.] L'Es…

o put together unsuitably or unskillfully; to express or perform in a bungling manner; to spoil or mar, as by unskillful work. For treason botched in rhyme will be thy bane. Dryden.

rs. -- Civil service reform, the substitution of business principles and methods for the spoils system in the conduct of the civil service, esp. in the matter of appointments to office. -- Civil state, the whole body of the laity or citizens not included under the military, maritime, and ecclesiastical states. -- Ci…

litical methods in the conduct of the civil service. esp. the merit system instead of the spoils system in making appointments to office.

lub root (Bot.), a disease of cabbages, by which the roots become distorted and the heads spoiled. -- Club topsail (Naut.), a kind of gaff topsail, used mostly by yachts having a fore-and-aft rig. It has a short "club" or "jack yard" to increase its spread.