| 单词 | despoliation |
| 例句 | despoliation noun •the despoliation of the countryside:plunder, plundering, pillaging, looting, ransacking, ravishing, sacking | ravaging, devastation, ruination, vandalism.USAGE spoliation, despoliation A learned word, spoliation /spoh-lee- ay-shun/ means “the act of ruining, destroying, or spoiling something.” In the hands and mouths of the less-than-learned, it's often misspelled and mispronounced spoilation. The difference between the form of the verb and of the noun arises from different paths by which the words came into English: in the fourteenth century, spoil was borrowed from Old French ( espoille), whereas in the fifteenth century, spoliation was borrowed from Latin ( spoliātio). Despoliation (= pillaging, plundering) is often misspelled despoilation —a blunder that surprises primarily because it occurs in otherwise highly literate writing—e.g.: “The horrors of gulag and the environmental despoilations [read despoliations ] of the Soviet era both get their due here.” ( Washington Times; Feb. 27, 1994.) Oddly, though, the corresponding verb is despoil. Why the discrepancy in spelling? The answer again lies in the vagaries of linguistic history. English borrowed the verb in the thirteenth century from Old French ( despoillier) but the noun in the seventeenth century from Latin ( despoliatio). And those two forms—for centuries, at any rate—stuck.Usage notes show additional guidance on finer points of English usage. |
| 随便看 |
英语同义词词典收录了14896条英语词条，基本涵盖了全部常用同义词或反义词的辨析及翻译，是英语学习的有利工具。