spoil

«spoil» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: plunder, loot — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

kind

archaic sense

modern equivalent

plunder, loot

part of speech

noun (plural spoils)

meaning for a pupil

Goods taken from people or towns that were defeated, such as loot after a battle. tree →

how it differs from today

Today spoil means to ruin something or make it worse. The old sense of loot won in war appears in all three sentences.

examples

• And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of man and of beast. (Torah NUM.31.11, JPS 1917) tree →
• The Ass was asked to divide the spoil. (The Aesop for Children / With pictures by Milo Winter) tree →
• But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey unto ourselves. (Torah DEU.3.7, JPS 1917) tree →

primary record

spoil

tests

manual 10.3; corpora 56 (Torah 11, tales 45, Sefer Yetzirah 0); EWT 1; ratio 2.1 (Torah alone 8.6); Wiktionary archaic (first sense)

In the corpora

• The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister.
• Benjamin is a wolf that raveneth; in the morning he devoureth the prey, and at even he divideth the spoil.'
• And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
• only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, with the spoil of the cities which we had taken.
• But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey unto ourselves.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «spoil» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.