spoil
verb · noun
Simple meaning
Make a mess of, destroy or ruin.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
spoylIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈspɔɪl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Make a mess of, destroy or ruin
transitive
To ruin; to damage in such a way as to make undesirable or unusable.
transitive
To ruin the character of, by overindulgence; to coddle or pamper to excess.
intransitiveof food or drink
To go bad; to become sour or rancid; to decay.
transitive
To prematurely reveal major events or the ending of (a story etc.); to ruin (a surprise) by exposing ahead of time as a spoiler.
transitive
To render (a ballot) invalid by deliberately defacing.
noun
also in plural: spoils
Plunder taken from an enemy or victim.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Make a mess of, destroy or ruin
Used this way, spoil is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- botch , rarer, so it draws attention
- bollocks , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use spoil
- “The meat must be eaten before it spoils.”verb
- “Her spoiling my dress was deliberate.”noun
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A candidate with no chance of winning but who may draw enough votes to prevent one of the leading candidates from winning.
The process of becoming spoiled.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The system of employing and promoting civil servants who are friends and supporters of the group in power.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.