Spoils

How to spell spoils

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spoils

What does spoils mean?

1. verbDamages or ruins something, or causes food to go bad; also indulges someone excessively.
2. nounGoods, profits, or advantages gained by force or as a reward of victory.

Spoils in a sentence

• verb

  Warm weather quickly spoils fresh fish left out of the fridge.

• noun

  The victorious army divided the spoils among its officers.

• verb

  One careless typo spoils an otherwise flawless report.

• noun

  After the merger, the executives quietly shared the spoils.

Where does spoils come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun spolium, which originally meant the skin or hide stripped from an animal, and by extension the armour or goods stripped from a defeated enemy. From the verb spoliare, meaning 'to strip' or 'to plunder', the sense of carrying off the property of others developed naturally. English took it through Old French espoille and the verb espoillier during the 1200s and 1300s, at first chiefly in the military sense of stripping the slain of their valuables. Over time the verb broadened to mean ruining or damaging something, and then to food going bad, while the plural noun held onto its older meaning of plunder, as in 'the spoils of war'. The 'oi' spelling reflects that French passage, and the silent simplicity of the ending hides nothing tricky once you know the root sits in 'spoliate' and 'despoil' too.

How the word is built

• spoil (from Latin spolium: plunder, stripped hide)
• -s (plural/third-person ending)