Other forms: despoiled, despoiling
To despoil is to strip a place of its goods by force. Despoil the countryside, despoiled by invaders, despoil a shrine.
It is literary and heavy, and it carries a sense of desecration as well as theft. In modern use it is applied most to landscapes, where despoiling means ruining rather than looting.
1verbdespoilTo strip a place of its goods by force.
“Invading soldiers despoiled the town, carrying off its gold and burning its churches.”
despoil is a plundering.
Latin despoliare means to plunder, from de plus spoliare, to strip, from spolium, booty.
Latin
dēspoliō
Old French
despoillier
Middle English
despoylen,dispoylen
English, today
despoil
From Middle English despoylen,dispoylen, from Old French despoillier (> French dépouiller), from Latin dēspoliō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire