Other forms: spoiled, spoils, spoiling
To spoil something is to ruin it — to take the good out of a thing that was fine before. One remark spoils an evening, rain spoils the picnic, somebody tells you the ending and spoils the film.
Food spoils when it goes off: the milk spoiled in the heat of the car. With a child, spoiling means giving so much and refusing so little that they end up unbearable — a spoilt child in Britain, a spoiled child in America, and both past forms are correct in British English. Spoiling a person can also be kind: spoil your mother on her birthday, or be spoilt for choice when there are too many good options. The noun spoils is always plural and means what the winner carries off: the spoils of war. A spoiler is the warning before you give away a plot — or, in a different life entirely, the wing on the back of a car.
1verbruinTo ruin something, or damage the quality of it.
“The scaffolding spoiled the view from the terrace.”
2verbfoodOf food, to go bad and become unfit to eat.
“Fish spoils quickly in this heat.”
3verbspoilTo harm a child's character by giving them everything they ask for.
“His grandparents spoiled him and he expected the same treatment everywhere.”
4verbtreatTo treat someone with special kindness and attention.
“They spoiled her on her last night and would not let her pay.”
5noungoodsGoods or advantages taken by the winner, always in the plural.
“The spoils were divided before the fighting had even stopped.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Spoil came from Old French espoillier and, before that, Latin spoliō, which meant to plunder, to strip, to take the armour off a fallen enemy. That is why the spoils of war are the things carried away. The gentler modern uses — a spoiled dinner, a spoiled child — are the same word with the violence worn off it.
Old French
espoillier
Middle English
spoilen
English, today
spoil
From Middle English spoilen, from Old French espoillier. From Middle English spoilen, spuylen, borrowed from Old French espoillier, espollier, espuler, from Latin spoliō (“pillage, ruin, spoil”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA