0 present participle of despoil
1 to make a place less attractive especially by taking things away from it by force:
Many of the tombs had been despoiled.
We are eating ourselves out of house and home and despoiling our nest into the bargain.
Even more perilously, it faced the enormous obstacle of this genre of moral tales centered on a "despoiling" plot.
What is the real reason for the despoiling of the country-side which is taking place in so many beauty spots?
We cannot continue despoiling the best parts of the country purely to extract sand and gravel.
We are not talking about vandals, although some of the environmentalists would suggest that foresters are despoiling the countryside.
However, it is not simply people coming from the towns despoiling the countryside that worries me.
They are the party of law and order—except when it comes to polluting and despoiling our environment.
That is a desperately important issue because at present we are despoiling vast amounts of the world's environment.
