Words / D / General

despoil

verb/dɪˈspɔɪl/

C2CEFR level
70/100Rarity: rare
FormalRegister

To plunder or strip a place of possessions by force.

The retreating army despoiled every village it passed through.

Similar: plunder, pillage, ransack

Origin: From Latin despoliare 'to rob, strip'.

Topic: plunder in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: plunder